Tuesday 10

Today's 10...Things I'm doing:

1. Reading Philippa Gregory's The Virgin's Lover. I started it a couple weeks ago, but put it aside to read (rather quickly) Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which I loved.

2. Listening to NPR's South by Southwest Sampler and loving the songs by Blitzen Trapper and The Decemberists.

3. Eating lots of fruit, homemade peanut butter and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Unfortunately the cookies didn't last long around here thanks to Shawn and Thierry!

4. Watching Planet Earth in HD. So incredible in HD!

5. Playing with the April Scrap for a Cure kit, which launched today. Here's my gallery pages. The first one is this weeks Monday Challenge. Go here to play along.






6. Wishing I could hold this sweet thing.

7. Posting here and here.

8. Thinking about babies, master's degrees, career plans, starting an etsy....

9. Wearing clothes from the kids department at Target. I'm telling you a size XL or 16 at Target is plenty big for a smaller sized adult. I've bought several cute tops and a couple dresses in the past month or so and have gotten my mom and sister into the habit of cruising the girls department as well!

10. Dreaming about vacations, home decor projects/plans, babies...yes, I have a bad case of baby fever...shopping sprees.

Saturday Adventures

After work today, I met up with my sister and we headed to the newly opened West Elm and William Sonoma Home stores in Scottsdale. We've been waiting for West Elm to open and spent lots of time wandering around the store admiring displays and colors. Because I suck at having my camera when I need it, I took a few pictures with my Blackberry. They aren't very good pictures, but you'll get the idea.

Here's a cute display with birdcages and pillows:

Here's an art display, I'm thinking I am going to lift. I especially love the red chair print and the typography print, which was just letters stenciled with paint.


Another liftable idea from William Sonoma Home. I'm definitely doing this with all the starfish left over from my wedding.


There wasn't much at William Sonoma Home that I could afford, but I did buy this serving bowl at West Elm, which I am totally using to plant succulents in like they had in the store. Told you I was obsessed with succulents lately.

Next we headed to Starbucks for a snack and to Anthropolgie to cruise the clearance section. Mmmm, Anthropologie twice in one week, heavenly. The shopping fun had to come to an end however, because I had (have) a rather large to do list this weekend, which included groceries (done), scrapping assignments (started), laundry (started), cleaning (started) and billing.

I did however, forget to mail this little beauty to my curly haired friend and her dimpled baby girl today. Ok, so truthfully, I might not be ready to part with it yet....


I finished this hat a couple nights ago and I am in love with it. I'm thinking I need to make more of these because it is just too darn cute. Can't wait to see Miss Ella wearing it!


I'd better get back to scrapping. Before I go, here's another peek from the April Scrap for a Cure kit. I was actually able to use some Basic Grey...this is big for me!


Hope your Saturday was as good as mine.

Sneaky sneak sneak

I've been a busy girl lately. Lots of scrapping, knitting, working, shopping, playing and hanging with friends. Last Sunday I met up with Ally for some scrapping and sushi, something that I think should definitely become a ritual. I managed to get 1 page finished, 2 started and make a card. Here's one of the pages I started and finished the next evening. One of my favorite photos of Shawn taken on my birthday in October.


Here's another one I started before scrapping with Ally and finished on Monday. I think this is about it for my Bibliography kit. I've pretty much used it down to little bits and scraps.


I've also been busy playing with the April kit from Scrap for a Cure. The kit is full of yummy papers and embellishment and has been lots of fun to play with. Here's a little peek:


And a sneaky sneak from one of my pages:


Check the Scrap for a Cure blog and forums for more sneaks from the DT over the next several days.

I'm off to enjoy some Grey's and knit.

Welcome to the world

Eloise Morgan Adams, "Ella," born March 23 at 2:49 am. Her Mommy is one of my favorite people in the world and I am so happy for her. Congratulations Tim and Jessie on your beautiful baby girl. I can't wait till I can to meet her and hold her. I'm a little sad it won't be for awhile, but in the mean time, "Auntie" Erin is working on something sweet for little Miss Ella.

Irish 10

2. Erin Go Braugh

3. Colorful Irish Doors

4. Aran knits

5. Smoked Salmon and Brown Bread

6. Irish Cottages

7. Fleadh Nua in Ennis, Ireland

8. Connemara


9. Ballyvaughan street signs

10. This song

Weekend of "Want To"

This weekend I

• Got a pedicure
  
• went to Target twice
• spent a lot of time on the internet
• knit
• read
• hung out with Shawn
• hung out with Mom and Kellie
• scrapped a page and half
• worked on Create 09
• hung out with Jack and Andrea
• went to the track to watch Shawn and Jack race
• ate Lemon Ricotta pancakes at Wildflower
• chatted at Scrapgal and Studio Calico
• went to Summer Winds nursery
• turned soil
• yanked out roots from the dreaded mint infestation
• potted flowers
• did laundry
• enjoyed some eye candy on GCD Studios new blog
• almost bought a full cart of sale stuff from Heidi Swapp's site, but than remembered I need clothes that fit far more than I need MORE scrap stuff
• surfed etsy

This weekend I did not

• vacuum
• mop floors
• dust
• put away clean laundry
• clean bathrooms
• work on my taxes
• take things to Goodwill
• make Shawn clean up his messes
• go to the grocery store
• pick up my prescription
• put away mail and bills

Are you noticing the trend here? Granted, I still have tomorrow to get some of these things done. I'm guessing some of these to do's will have to wait though, as my garden and scrap room sound so much more appealing. I wonder how many more meals I can scrounge up from what we still have in the freezer, fridge and pantry? I did pretty good tonight with a spinach pie created from some puff pastry and frozen spinach from the freezer and feta, parsley, mushrooms and potatoes from the fridge.

Hope your weekend was full of things you wanted to do rather than things you needed to do.

Today's 10

1. Homemade bread and homemade peanut butter, what could be better?
2. A drop in visit with Miss Amelia and her Mama
3. Organized paper stacks...finally
4. A quick page with the gorgeous Lucky kit
5. One of my favorite 3 year olds smothered himself, the TV and computer chair with some Icy Hot he somehow got a hold of in the 5 minutes his mother and I discussed cuts and the economy.
6. 30 minutes spent massaging my incision with vitamin E oil
7. A new obsession with succulents. Plan on getting some from the Target garden center this week.
8. Speaking of succulents, did some Etsy browsing this morning and found this cute plant, this adorable dress and these cute prints.
9. My new favorite pomegranite blueberry sorbet to soothe my throat.
10. Contemplating grad school...special ed, speech, school psychology....hmmm....

Today in pictures

Because I need to take more everyday pictures and because I just felt like playing with my camera, I've decided to post today in pictures. Now keep in mind that none of these photos are edited, although that's another thing I should spend some time playing around with.

This morning started with a phone call on my new pretty phone:


The work call woke me from a pretty deep sleep around 7:30 and I got up about 10 minutes later. I promptly plopped myself on the couch with my laptop and the Today show with no intention of moving anywhere for awhile. Unfortunately, I remembered I needed to finish the laundry before we switched from off peak electricity hours to peak hours. So for the next few hours my couch time was interrupted by this:


About 11 or so I decided Shawn wasn't going to eat anymore of those bananas as they were starting to be more brown than yellow, so I made this:


I tried a new recipe from this cookbook. It has a nice brown sugar and cinnamon flavor, which is a nice twist on my typical banana bread recipe. Yum!

Off and on throughout the day I've been picking up this little project to add a few rows:


This hat is a gift for a baby shower in a couple of weeks. It's looking pretty cute, although if I make another one with this yarn I will use smaller needles. If I didn't have to go to work to do a make-up session this afternoon, I would have stayed on the couch and finished this little guy up today. Maybe I'll get it done while watching Heroes tonight.

Sadly, my domestic bliss afternoon was interrupted by a 40 minute drive to see one of my kiddos since I missed him last Thursday when I lost my voice. I spent about 45 of our 90 minute session explaining how he needed to "use nice words," "make good choices," "think about his body," "put on his listening ears" and "follow directions" in order to earn his 4 tokens for music therapy, his piano time and his Vitamin Water. He earned 2 tokens. After leaving his house, I stopped at Whole Foods for a couple items and headed home in the beginnings of rush hour traffic.

Once home, I discovered a fabulous brown package from Studio Calico on my doorstep and headed inside to open it up and marvel at it's beauty. I had to cut the product fondling short to get to work on this no knead bread so it would be ready in time for dinner:



While it was rising, I started a pot of lentil soup. Now it was about 70 degrees here today, probably not soup weather, but I'm still not feeling myself and a nice pot of soup and homemade bread just sounded good to me.


I just pulled the bread out of the oven and once it's cooled a bit I'm ready to sit down with my yummy dinner. Unfortunately, I've still got this waiting for me in my bedroom:


Hope your Monday was good!

Paying it Forward

I had every intention of blogging more this week. I had every intention of posting a Tuesday 10 and catch up on Create 09. But, it's been a rough week. I haven't been feeling well and I've been worried about my job. Last night I had a huge meltdown and today I had a well deserved milkshake. I think I'm ready to move forward.

In the spirit of moving forward, I'm paying it forward. The "Pay it Forward" idea is circulating in blogland once again and I have decided once again to play along. I have actually been fortunate to sign up for some mailbox love from both the fabulous G and the uber-crafty Andrea. So I will be paying it forward times two. Here's the deal...be one of the first 6 people to comment on this post and I will promise to send you some happy mail sometime within the next 365 days. When and what you will get will be a surprise. The catch is that you need to be willing to pay it forward for 3 lucky people on your blog. Sounds like fun, right?

Happy Saturday!

Held Hostage

I am stuck in my house this morning, waiting for the windshield replacement guy to get here. Don't you love how you get a window (pun intended) of time to wait it out, but they never show until the last hour? He's supposed to be here sometime between 8 at noon....it's 9 now and they just called me to say he'll call when he's on his way. Don't get me wrong, I've got plenty to do around the house this morning...finish up the laundry, vacuum, mop, clean bathrooms, billing, weed pulling....but I also have some errands to run...target, groceries, post office...and would much rather run them before the afternoon rush hour begins. Let's hope Mr. Glassman arrives soon.

In the mean time, here's the March kit from Scrap for a Cure. It's loaded with fun springy papers and embellishments.


Here are the rest of my pages for this month's gallery (the other is on yesterday's blog entry). If I get all my to do's done today, I will be scrapping some more with this kit, so stay tuned for more pages. It's really a great kit and I will likely use it up till only scraps remain.




Time to get cleaning.
Happy Monday!

A Good Day

Happy Birthday to the fabulous Miss Nicole! I hope you've had a wonderful weekend and congratulations on your exciting news! I'm so happy for you and Jim. Wish I could have been there to celebrate with you!

The above page was made with the March kit from Scrap for a Cure. I will share the rest of my pages tomorrow, but you should hurry over to the site and pick one up right away. This kit is beautiful and fast becoming one of my favorites.

Today was a good day. I spent my morning scrapbooking. Than I headed out to meet my mom and sister for a mother/daughter afternoon. We went to see Alvin Ailey, which was incredible. Truly amazing. If you haven't seen Alvin Ailey before, you really should add it to your list of things to do. They are amazing. After the show we headed to Postino to share a bottle of wine. Before heading home we picked up some delicious Tammy Coe desserts from La Grande Orange. I enjoyed a lovely slice of super fattening peanut butter pie. Yum!

Here's an Alvin Ailey video. This is one section of one of the three dances we saw today. Revelations is always my favorite. I've seen it before and it wows me everytime. Enjoy!