She tells lies

Don't believe this girl when she tells you I ate half her cheeseburger--see comments from previous post--she tells lies! Truthfully, I wouldn't touch her cheeseburger with a ten foot pole...gross! My car actually smelled like cheeseburgers too after the trip to In and Out Burger....yuck! I haven't had a cheeseburger, or any other meat for that matter, since I was like 13 years old and never liked it much prior to that. So, don't let her fool you. Just because she suddenly craves gross cheeseburgers again, she thinks I need to as well. Bleh!

Jess, you know I love you, but I had to clear this up....I did not nor will I ever join you in the cheeseburger consumption.....seriously, I almost lost my breakfast when I read your comment!

Random updates

I promised more stories of my fun birthday weekend, but the week has been a bit full of other things and I haven't had a chance, or an interest really, in updating the blog until today.

In today's news, I was chosen as a runner up in the Kristina Contes design contest at Cocoa Daisy for this page

For my prize I get to choose a past kit. I'm having trouble deciding what I want. I'm looking at add on kits, since I've gotten each monthly kit since April. A lot of the add on kits I love are sold out, but I do like this and this, although I should probably clarify that I can choose an add-on kit and if I can pick one from the current month....anyway, I'm excited to have been chosen runner up.

As for more weekend stories, we had a great time. Saturday was spent shopping at Forever 21, eating lunch at P.B. Loco and more shopping at the mall, where we (meaning one of us--Jessie, Nicole, Kellie and myself) made purchases at Anthropologie, Nordstrom's, Lucy and Ann Taylor loft. After a little afternoon siesta at my house, we headed to Postino for a little wine and dinner. I love the atmosphere at Postino! They had the garage doors open (it used to be a post office and the garage doors were left as part of the atmosphere) so we had some nice cool air from outside with our comfy seating on the couch. It's such a fun place and has the most amazing bruschetta--we ordered one of each--yum!

Sunday was spent having brunch at my parents. My mom made "pumpkin pancakes yum," her words, with an apple and pecan topping. Very delicious. I would love to post more pictures, but blogger is not letting me, so you can imagine that we had a lovely brunch by the pool in my parents courtyard, surrounded by flowers and hummingbirds with temperatures in the high 80's.

After some time at my parents, we headed to Verde Maison, for some paraben free shopping...more on this some other time....and to In and Out Burger, where to my shock and horror both Jessie and Nicole ordered cheeseburgers!!! What is this world coming to?

Before leaving for the airport, Jessie and Nicole flipped through my scrapbooks and some idea books, I do pretty much have the idea book library, while the boys chased down a Koi from our pond and packaged it up for transport on the plane to Oregon.....boys.....thankfully, the fish made it to Jessie and Tim's pond safe and sound.

All in all we had an amazing time and I miss my girls desperately. It's really not fair that we live in different states. At least we've been able to see each other pretty regularly over the past couple years.

Happy 30th to me!

Thanks to my amazing friends and family, I just had the best birthday weekend! It started out with a drink after band rehearsal Thursday night, which I later learned was set up as a ploy to keep me out a little bit later.....I was out a little too late however and didn't get home until after midnight. The first thing I saw when I got home was a clean house, which was really exciting, but than I walked in to my living room to see Jessie and Nicole sitting there with Shawn...patiently awaiting my arrival. This was a total surprise! I had no idea they were coming to visit and though I found a couple things suspicious in the past couple weeks, really didn't have a clue they were planning a trip here to surprise me. According to Jessie, my face was pretty priceless and I'm quite certain she'll be posting pictures on her blog soon.

Friday, my birthday, we went to Einstein's bagels, where Jessie announced it was my birthday and I got a lovely rendition of Happy Birthday, free bagels and a birthday muffin from the staff.
Later, Stephanie picked us up and we met my mom and sister for lunch at Chelsea's kitchen. The food was delicious and I got yet another rendition of Happy Birthday with some key lime pie and 3-0 candles. After lunch we got pedicures at this adorable new nail shop called Sundrops. The place is very cute and very girly! Here we are sitting on the cute little banquets getting pampered.

That night we gathered the boys and headed to my parents house for dinner. We had a lovely dinner of salad and gumbo cooked by my mom, my dad's famous gin and tonics, a bottle of wine or two and the very special carrot cake, which after some kitchen disasters nearly caused my mother to opt for purchased cake and ordering pizza instead of slaving away in the kitchen. Tim took lots of wonderful pictures of the festivities. Here's one of the girls.

After dinner and before opening presents, Jessie and Nicole read me a list of 30 reasons why they love me. The list was too wonderful and very sweet. Tim captured several shots of my reaction to the list and most of them look like variations of me in hysterics....

They did also manage to make me cry.....I have the best friends ever! Jessie and Nicole I love you both!

All in all it was a great 30th birthday celebration! I will post later about the rest of our weekend escapades, as there are more stories and pictures to share. Jessie, Tim and Nicole left for the airport a couple of hours ago and I now need to catch up on the usual weekend routine of laundry and such. Here's wishing my 30th year remains as good as it has started out to be!

Say Goodbye...

Today is my last day in my 20's....tomorrow I will be turning 30! Crazy, I know! What shall I be doing to celebrate the last day of my 20's....not much out of the ordinary Thursday. I have sessions at Chrysalis, 3 other kids, band rehearsal....and than probably a little pre-birthday drink with Stephanie and some of my fellow band geeks after rehearsal.

Yesterday my sister did buy me a pre-birthday lunch and delicious cupcake at LGO. Thanks Kellie! I arrived home from work last night, opened the garage and let out a gasp....it was clean, like really clean and organized on shelves even! Shawn and his brother spent yesterday cleaning and organizing the garage! Believe me, this is huge. Since the arrival of the new project car and the removal of shelving from Shawn's office, the garage has been a HUGE disaster....you can now see the ground and walk through it without fear of getting swallowed up by car parts and boxes! Now if I could get him to move the cleaning inside......one step at a time I guess! Definitely a pre-birthday gift to have a clean garage! Thanks Shawn!

Today I am also saying good bye to Last Scrapper Standing...I didn't even make the first cut in the competition, which is kind of disappointing. Here's the page I did...I really like how it turned out, but I guess it's not to innovative.....


It may be time to take a little break from contests and challenges in scrapbook land. I'm finding myself a little too caught up in them and too worried about what other people think of my stuff. It really doesn't matter, I like it and making pages and projects makes me happy. I don't ever want to be some one who makes stuff just to get noticed or published or win competitions and contests....

I'm off to prepare for the final day of 29......looking forward to tomorrow and celebrating with my friends and family!

It's OCTOBER!

So, this is not the greatest picture in the world, but it's shockingly one of only two pumpkin pictures that I have in my files! I'm definitely going to have to remedy that situation....I need a trip to the pumpkin patch I think!

Happy October! I love October!

October means:
my birthday (in 5 days)
pumpkins galore...did I mention I love pumpkins...
temperatures dropping, at least a bit, here in AZ...it's supposed to be only 80 today!
leaves changing, at least in N. AZ
Halloween
Martha Stewart Halloween issue (the only one I every buy)
Fall

Here's wishing you and yours a wonderful month of October!

Five on Friday

I've been feeling a bit under the weather the past few days and have not done much beyond working and climbing in bed to watch tv or read magazines. Since I missed my ten on Tuesday post...Stephanie and I even figured out a topic for this week....I've decided to post Five on Friday instead.

1. Won a RAK from d.reeves design house blog and she sent me these in the mail, plus she threw in a super cool 3 x 3 acrylic mini album. I'm so excited to play with these! Her stuff is super cool!

2. Got my hair cut and colored today. A few darker low lights for the fall and about 2 inches off.


3. The reorganize Shawn's office project will likely continue tomorrow if I can muster up some energy. I got a lot done, but there's definitely more to do. Here's what the new shelves look like so far.

4. Looking forward to a little AZ Sister's crop on Sunday at a local scrapbook store I've never been to...can you believe it? Should be fun to meet these girls in real life and do a little round robin.

5. Saw an amazing Michael Kors red purse at TJ Maxx today...even there it still costs $180....maybe someone wants to buy it for my birthday (hint, hint) next week?

Clean...build...reorganize....

Thought I'd post a quick blog entry before I get back to the clean...build....reorganize project. Arrived home from work yesterday raring to go on the "clean out Shawn's office and reorganize while he's out of town project." Spent all afternoon and into the night cleaning and hauling things out in an effort to put new, more functional shelving into Shawn's office so his work inventory and mailing supplies can leave my dining table and entry way! The hardest part seems to be building the new shelves. They look great, but man are they a pain to assemble! I gave up on the project about 8pm last night, ate some dinner and headed to the scrap room for a little me time. Managed to create 2 1/2 pages before retiring to a hot shower and bed time.

This page tells a little behind my cleaning rampage....preparation for the kitchen remodel. I've had plans for our kitchen since we moved in two years ago, but it's yet to happen. Hopefully we'll be starting soon. Though I may not be able to afford everything I really want for my dream kitchen, I have a lovely page to inspire the look I'm going for. This page was inspired by the Sarah Bowen scrapjack and I love how it turned out...I may have to hang it in my new kitchen someday!