A Beautiful Disaster

The Last Day of Vacation...

Alas, I have to go back to school starting Tuesday. It's bittersweet, I enjoy having some downtime for once, but I'm excited to start my new classes! I'm almost done with my AA in Graphic Illustration and all that's left is 6 art classes.  This semester I'll be taking 4 of those 6 classes: Color Theory, Visual Communications, Drawing II and Digital Imaging.  I'm kind of excited because for once, every single class can be applied to my work, which makes it feel all the more worthwhile!

On this last day of vacation, I'll be preparing to deal with my course load again by pulling swatches and brainstorming kits, perhaps photographing some new elements to extract and some other busy work. I'm trying to get ahead in the coming weeks to lessen the stress as well and I'm hoping this will help.  Look for a new Create A Kit contest coming soon too!

I'll leave you with my Studly Sunday p365 shot and my layout with I Loved Her First..happy Martin Luther King day!

Wifey snuggles before bedtime are the best :)

Sore...oh yeah.

So I made it through a whole day of this yesterday without falling once!!

Not bad for the first time in 10 years! But man oh man I'm FEELING it today! Here's some other shots of our trip yesterday.

It was SO nice on the mountain! I'd forgotten how much snowboarding makes me happy (and terrifies me).  And since Patrick and I are both college students, on Friday at the resort we went to the lift tickets are only $15!  Can't beat that with a stick!

Here's my p365 picture from yesterday too:

A view from the top of the world...

Also, today's Skinny Saturday so I have my weight loss update..

I've officially lost 33 lbs!  I didn't lose too much last week because I lost 4 lbs the week before I think (and yanno, the bit of snacking I did..haha!) But that's cool!  I FINALLY got to fill my pantry and freezer back up this weekend, so staying on plan will be MUCH easier now. I'm also putting the kibosh on my Starbucks habit.

No. Really. *sigh*

You might remember this little layout professing my love for it?

Well I still love it, but alas..it is expensive and it's no longer an expense I'm willing to pay for.  Wah!!

I bought one of these CUTE little 6 cup coffee pots, some Breakfast Blend Coffee and creamer and you know what, It was actually pretty good! And less points than a frappuccino.  I shall miss my friends at Starbucks though. Ha!

Another cool thing about 33 lbs is that I lost another pant size. Unfortunately, I'm still wearing pants that are 1 and 2 sizes too big which leads to the problem I like to call the Saggy Butt Syndrome. And the I-have-to-roll-the-waistband-of-my-pants-twice-to-make-them-kind-of-fit Syndrome.  So today I dragged Patrick down to Thrift Town and ended up with 5 pairs of designer jeans, a lace shirt and a denim cropped jacket for the whopping total of $42!  One of the pairs of jeans I bought alone retail in BeBe for $75! Score! and most importantly, they make my butt look fantaaastic :) Ha! Just thought I'd share!

Finally, as always, I have a new product this weekend, inspired by the Heartland song "I Loved Her First" about Daddy's Little Girl and Momma's Boy :)

A layout with this one will be coming with my next post! I'll leave you with some things that are inspiring me lately :)

 

source

source

source

Rainy Days and Tuesdays

Well today was one of those slow, rainy days in the Reed household.  I did some scrapping, some cleaning, no working because apparently I have no design mojo. At least the house is clean!  I need to do some serious stock up shopping next week. I hate when I feel like Old Mother Hubbard, haha.

I knew it was going to rain today, so yesterday we got out and took advantage of the *cold but at least not rainy* weather.  I was feeling in high spirits so I decided to do an action shot for my Mug Shot Monday.  I handed off the camera and had Patrick shoot me while I goofed off.  We came up with a surprisingly good shot!

I ran some filters over it to make it soft and slightly blurry and I think I love it! It's goofy at least!

I'm having fun coming up with new shots each day so far.  I love having a direction each day, but still being able to do whatever floats my boat :) Here are some shots of P and the kids having their own fun!

 

A boy and his dog :)

 

a boy and his daddy :) :)

 

Jo's impressed at Patrick's mad skateboarding skills

 

and happy he can stand up on the board himself...maybe someday he'll bust out a trick and impress us all :)

I Have A Non-Smoking Husband

Yesterday was Studly Sunday and I'm happy to report that my Studly husband has decided to become even studlier and quit smoking! He decided this completely out of the blue Saturday night when I was in bed so I woke up to a smoke-free husband.  He normally is UNBEARABLE when he's quitting smoking. So much so that I beg him to go have a smoke for God's sake!  But Sunday I was so impressed! Instead of spending the day in bed, he actually got up and went to church with me, he was in pretty good spirits all day and he keeps giving me all these nuggets of wisdom he's garnered from the "How To Quit Smoking" websites that he's going to do to help him quit!  I'm so happy for him!

Of course, in honor of his first day of no more smoking, he had to light an old one up and have me take his picture (gee..go figure), but seeing how excited he was to smush out the butt, I think he'll do well :)

He looks miserable, no? Eh well, the first week is the hardest!  Good luck honeybuns :)

In other news, I put out some new product Saturday..12x24" Stitches and a new kit called Live Your Life :)

I scrapped with Live Your Life layout too!  It's for the SSD book of me challenge...I think a fun little book of me at 25 will be cool for my kids to look at 20 years from now!

I'm trying to scrap with my new releases each week..sort of a little personal goal of mine this year but it seems that life gets busy pretty fast..so we'll see how often I get to.

Oh, also, one of my Smilebox albums is finally up on their site!  It's with Kristin and I's January AMAAT Kit from 2008 (recolored a little) and it came out super cute! If you're not using Smilebox, you don't know what you're missing!

Here's a quick little example I made up with it using our snow pics from a couple years ago 

Let It Snow

Have a happy Tuesday!

Four. Yep, we made it through.

Phew! No post yesterday because I was spending it with my brand new FOUR year old! LOL

We did all the things four year olds love to do, we had doughnuts for breakfast:

 

We went to the mall, parked on the TOP of the parking garage and Josiah pretended we snuck in and out like bandits.  We had lunch at McDonalds and played in the play area at the mall.

Then we came home and he played the Wii while I figured out how to make purple cupcakes. Not PASTEL purple, but real purple...like the creepy purple dinosaur on TV.

 

Oh yes, it can be done.

My brand new four year old then wanted his cupcakes to be frosted with half chocolate icing, and half vanilla (cream cheese) dyed orange. Sprinkles and a 4 candle on top of course.

And then he had a mountain of candles to blow out. Which took a few tries :)

Proof Sheet by Christina Renee

Happy birthday little man :)

Yesterday was also 1 of 2 Wednesday so I got a picture of my other little man, complete with his crazy over grown hair (we're trying to grow both the boys' hair out). 

This little guy is currently enjoying a day in his room, grounded.  All week he's been screaming and crying in the morning saying he's still tired, not getting enough sleep, yadda yadda (he goes to bed at 8 and gets up at 7 people!)  Well this morning was more of the same and today he actually ended up refusing to go in the classroom, crying and pitching a fit so loud that my husband was incredibly embarrassed.. screaming that he wanted breakfast (which P had given him and he refused to eat).

I know it's hard going back to school after 2 weeks off but he's now in trouble.  So I unplugged his TV, no video games or toys for a few hours.  Oughta be fun. We're on hour 2 and he wants to kill me.  I wish he didn't make things so hard on himself.

I also wonder if there's something at school that makes him not want to go...bullies? Is the teacher being mean again?  He just said it's boring, so is the curriculum not challenging enough or would he be bored regardless.  How does one fix this problem?

Miracles

Today we went to church.  We're attending a new church for the last 3 weeks that I just love.  We had a guest pastor from Corpus Christie, Texas today and something he said just socked me in the gut with its truth.  He was talking about how we all beg for Miracles from God.  How we say, God please, just bless my business, bless me financially, bless me with weight loss...bless me, please!  We can all relate to this I think but what he said that struck me so hard was this:

God doesn't perform miracles for things we can do ourselves.

Seriously people.  He said God is not going to bless your laziness by giving you something that you didn't work for.  Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead but he made the disciples take him to Lazarus first.  Only after the disciples had done everything that was in their own power to do did Jesus step in and perform the miracle.  In other words, if you want a blessing in your life, GO AFTER IT.  If you want more money this year, go work for it!

I thought that this was so profound for me and thought that maybe if it was just profound for one of you out there too then I should share it.

Anyway, today is Patrick's self-proclaimed Studly Sunday. No seriously, my husband is a dork and he named his day Studly Sunday..LOL!  Ah well, he is who I love and I shall celebrate that by proclaiming this day STUDLY SUNDAY! LOL

This is Patrick lookin' fiiine before church today.  He wore a suit jacket with a sweater, jeans and converse.  This so completely describes HIM that it's comical.  He is his own person and walks to the beat of a different drummer (Abraham Lincoln facial hair anyone?) and while I get so frustrated sometimes with that drummer, I wouldn't have it any other way. He grounds me, inspires me, captivates me and makes me laugh.  Most importantly, he puts up with my crazy too.  Isn't that what marriage is about?  Putting up with each other's crazy.