Views from the Mountains

Here's a few of the photos from our trip to Greer. It's a really beautiful little town in the mountains about four hours from Phoenix. We came here a lot when I was a kid. The place has changed a lot, but is still a cute little mountain town. This trip was my anniversary gift to Shawn...a couple of days spent fishing and a fly fishing lesson. We enjoyed cooler weather, gorgeous views, time together and lots of relaxation. Here's a view from the front porch of our room:


This is the main lodge at Greer Lodge. There are a handful of rooms and a restaurant with perfect patio dining. The lodge looks out on the Little Colorado River and three private ponds.


This is the view beyond the ponds at Greer Lodge. Those are private houses. How nice would that be?


I woke up around 7:30 our first morning in Greer and Shawn was nowhere to be found. I peeked out the window of our room and here's what I saw:


We had two trout ponds right outside our window. Shawn pretty much rolled out of bed, threw on some clothes and a hat, grabbed his fishing pole and commenced his day. He spent most of his time fishing and caught at least a dozen fish. He actually caught his first fish in the river within the first hour of being in town. It was raining at the time, so I didn't have the camera. Instead, I give you his second fish:


Here's what I spent most of my time doing:


I enjoyed the weather, read a book and a half, take some photos, took a couple of naps (a rare treat for me) and managed to get a v shaped sunburn from the v neck of my long sleeved shirt. Here's a few more of my favorite pictures:

Wednesday Wonderfuls

I missed my Tuesday 10 yesterday because I didn't feel like blogging. We returned home late in the afternoon from our fabulous few days here (did you miss me?) and I was too HOT to do anything much. I am so over 100+ degrees. I want to go back to the mountains where it was nice and cool. Thank goodness we're going to Chicago soon for another reprieve from the heat.

Because I missed my regular Tuesday nonsense, I've decided to post a few Wednesday Wonderfuls...things that made today a good day:

1. Home an hour early due to a cancellation.
2. Because I was home early, I actually scrapped a little bit, which is a good thing because I have TONS of stuff to get done and not a lot of time to do it.
3. Lunch with Kellie...LGO tuna sandwich and a better cookie to share
4. Working with crazy 3 year olds who keep me busy, wear me out, but give me lots of love.
5. A favorite easy summer recipe for dinner.

Amazing Art

So very cool.

10, is the Magic Number

1. Pictures from Kellie's birthday dinner at my parents last night. Here's a shot of the birthday girl contemplating turning 29:


The one where she almost catches her earrings on fire trying to blow out 29 candles (check out Toni's reaction in the background):


Laughing at the birthday girl's stories:


Dinner was delicious. Homemade guacamole and pico de gallo for appetizers, salmon tacos with mango salsa, grilled corn and black bean relish and peanut butter pie (Kellie's request) for dessert. Yum!

Oh and sangria, which was amazing:


2. This story from This American Life about the Harlem's Children Zone. Well worth listening to if you are an early childhood advocate or parent.

3. Pulled this out again this weekend and played with it a bit this morning.

4. School year work schedule is in full swing effective today. So long shortened summer hours and easier days.

5. Looking forward to rest, relaxation and cooler temperatures here in the near future.

6. Still on my reading kick. I'm about 2/3 of the way through this book and wondering which book I should read next.

7. Discovered a lovely little split in the wood of my "backup" guitar (that I have been using for well over a year now) during a session today. My nice guitar has 2 items that need to be repaired and has already undergone a pretty extensive rebuild do to damage...thinking I might have to bite the bullet and get a new one soon. With the amount of "love" my guitar receives from little fingers (and toes and mouthes...) I'm surprised I haven't had to buy a new one sooner.

8. Have spent a small fortune on continuing education classes and conferences over the past few days. The good news is that I will be earning tons of hours between two September events and the AMTA conference in November.

9. Looking forward to a little belated birthday art and cupcake celebration with a few of my favorite crafty girlies on Friday.

10. Loving this:

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Busy Bee

I've been a busy girl lately. Trying to get things done and cross items off of my very LONG to do list. I'm making progress, which feels good, but I've got a lot more on that list to accomplish.

Today was a mix of relaxing and to do's. I spent the morning in my pj's doing a little scrapping, something I haven't done much of in the past few weeks. I finally finished this mini album of our trip to La Jolla. I will share the rest of it later. The pictures I took earlier today, were done in haste and all ended up awfully blurry or too dark. This one isn't the greatest, but you get the idea.


After a little laundry, some cleaning and hanging out with Shawn, I headed to Target to buy some household items, a few groceries for tomorrow and a little something to add to my sister's birthday gift. As usual, I spent more time than necessary wandering the aisles at Target, but managed to keep my purchases to items on my list. I left Target and decided to swing through Sonic for an apple slush. Yum!

Despite the fact that it was close to 5pm by the time I got home, I managed to take care of several items on my to do list before cooking dinner. First job, plant the succulents I purchased yesterday at Ikea. I bought this white dish at West Elm a couple months ago with the intent of planting succulents in it, but had yet to get around to it. Yesterday, I met up with my mom after work and we ended up at Ikea, where they had several cute little succulents to choose from. My mom and I stood there for a good amount of time trying to figure out which three plants I should buy. I ended up with these guys:



I love them. I've been obsessed with succulents since the spring and have several in pots outside my house. These are my first indoor succulents, but I'm thinking I need a lot more of these happy little guys.

After planting, I started hanging a few items. First I hung a little canvas I bought yesterday. Before going to Ikea, I found my mom wandering Holland Boone looking for a piece of furniture for her extra bedroom/office. We found lots of nice pieces of furniture, including a beautiful wood buffet I am thinking of saving up for and a chest my mom bought. They had lots of fun wall decor and really cute fall/halloween decorations too. I ended up purchasing this piece, which I love:


Sorry for the bad picture, the lighting wasn't so good when I took it, but isn't she cute? I was told their other store has several more of these canvases. I may need to check them out. I'm not sure I love where I hung her, but she has a home for now. I'm thinking she may also serve as inspiration for my next canvas project.

Next up was hanging the "new" bathroom hooks (I purchased these at Anthropologie several months ago) in our bathroom. I hadn't hung them yet, because I needed to patch and paint the holes from the previous hooks. Since I painted the baseboards in our bathroom last weekend (another item that's long been on my list), I painted the spots on the wall and it was ready to go. Now we have fun new hooks to hang our towels on and can stop haning them over the shower door!


Today I also managed to get all the laundry done and put away, put clean sheets on our bed, make dinner and pico de gallo for Kellie's birthday dinner tomorrow, dust, clean the kitchen and wrap Kellie's present. The mopping, vacuuming, bathroom cleaning and birthday card making will have to wait for tomorrow. I'm tired!

I think I'm going to spend the rest of the night in bed with my knitting or a book. Speaking of knitting, here's a cute little baby hat I finished a few nights ago. I'd almost forgotten how much I love knitting hats, especially baby hats. This was a super simple one with self striping cotton yarn, but I think it's awfully cute.


Hope your weekend was fun and productive. Nighty night!

Since We Last Met

I've not been the greatest blogger lately. In fact, I don't have much to write about today either, but feel like I should at least post something. So here's a list...I'm good at lists...

Since we last met (Tuesday's post) I have:

Conducted 14 music therapy sessions
Discontinued one kiddo
Had lunch with my sister
Knitted 1/2 of a cute little baby hat
Spent a lot of time with Shawn
Had 2 strawberry milkshakes
Worked on some paperwork
Made homemade pesto
Spent almost 6 hours creating all new work documents with Michelle
Made several appointments
Took a whole backseat full of donations to Savers
Worked a bit on household messes and reorganization projects
Painted baseboards in our bathroom
Purchase some fun tape
Got a box full of Cosmo Cricket
Read Julie and Julia
Scrapped hardly anything
Spent a lot of time on the internet
Played too much Bejeweled on Facebook
Got an oil change
Purged about 6 magazines
Bought new sheets for our bed and a red colander for the kitchen
Ignored my blog

10 From Today

1. Still sniffling and sneezing away, but at least my throat and head don't hurt anymore. I did go to work today where I was treated to these goodies:

2.. "Want Kisses" J. (he's 3) said as he proceeded to shove his nose and mouth into my cheek as hard as possible. He says it again and then pushes my face to the other side so he can do the same thing over again on that side. Pretty cute until about the 3rd time when my face starts to feel bruised!

3."I like Erin. We play guitar and piano," N. (another 3 year old) said while he's looking right at me. He has a hard time with pronouns. He also said "that's a good one" and "that's so silly" about a dozen times each today.

4. M. sings at the top of his lungs "no more chonies" instead of "no anchovies" during the Pizza song.

5. M. (a different one) runs away from therapy into the bathroom where he proceeds to grab a plastic cup, fill it with water and dump the whole thing on his head.! Nice. Hey, it was 114 degrees today I'd have done it too if I could have gotten away with it.

6. No A/C at my last house (2 brothers who are always a handful) meant home early for me.

7. Once home, Shawn and I searched high and low for the name and number of the good A/C repair people, realizing we'd better have our suddenly noisy air conditioner checked out before we are left with no A/C on a 114 degree day. Our A/C died a couple summers ago and it was a miserable few days before we had the new one put in. We don't want to have any issues with this one.

8. Homemade spinach and mushroom pizza with fresh mozzarella and basil from my garden for dinner tonight. Angel food cake with berries and whipped cream for dessert. YUM!

9. Julie and Julia on the agenda for tonight. I'm about half way through and it's pretty entertaining thus far.

10. More Thera Flu and early bedtime also on the agenda tonight. Hoping I am back to my unsniffly self by tomorrow.

Weekend Update

This weekend I am

Cuddling this sweet girl, who is visiting while her mom is away in CA for the weekend:


Working at the computer on billing and paperwork, though I'd much rather be playing with paper, ink and photos.

Loving this apology note, which I received on Friday from a kiddo who was not so pleasant in therapy last week.


Nursing a runny nose and sore throat (allergies I'm hoping) with lots of tissues, throat lozenges and cold drinks and hoping it goes away soon.

Wishing I was in OR celebrating this girl's birthday. Here's a birthday cupcake for you Miss Jessie.

Image from flickr here

Sharing my August DT work. Here are my pages from August's Scrap for a Cure kit. Some lovely product in this kit. I am particularly in love with the Webster's Pages goodness and rub ons from Luxe.



Pretty fond of this GCD Paris Market paper and fun Luxe Ecology Organic paper too:


This Prima Sew Cute stitched paper is fun too (I've inked it up a bit too much...I got a bit carried away with the spray ink):


Here are my pages for the Scrapgal August DT Gallery. First up, some Sass goodness:


and cards with some GCD glittery paper. GCD is our sponsor this month and we are hosting a GCD contest...come play along for a fun GCD prize.


Now I best be getting back to work....after I grab some more tissues....

Happy Sunday!