Matt's B'day Party Skating Pics

Sorry for the delay in getting the birthday party skating pictures up. What can I say, the first of the year is always a busy time for accountants!!

We had a ball roller skating. I haven't been on skates since ???high school??? I think. I was proud of myself, I made it all afternoon without falling. Oh yeah I was wobbly when I first started. I think if I was to go back a few more times in the near future it would all come back and I'd be winning the "LIMBO" again!!

I did learn that pictures in a unlit skating rink aren't all that great....but here they are anyway.

Matt & Trey "in" the cake - literally....

Playing "Wipe-Out"

The birthday boy.

This is what pictures look like in a dark rink with a long range lens on without a tripod. The pic is Matthew and Michael.

Johnathon, Peyton, Katie

Whoaaaaa

Siblings.....

Parents of the birthday boy...

Brittany playing "Wipe-Out"





The birthday cake.....


The birthday child gets to "hand-print" the wall, sign & date it.....


Matt printed the wall next to his sister, Katie

The skating rink birthday party was pretty cool. They have "private" rooms that the b'day party gets to use in which they serve you either pizza or hot dogs/chips. Then they serve the cake/ice cream and keep track of all of the gifts for you. They even keep the gifts in a basket with the front counter person so you don't have to worry about keeping an eye on them while everyone is skating. Thanks for inviting me to your birthday party Matthew!!

SNOW

We finally got SNOW!!!!!!

Below is the "after" picture from this morning.
More snow pictures to come later this afternoon on my photo blog.

Falling from the sky

Someone isn't listening to me because it's not just snow falling from the sky, it's a mix of EVERYTHING. Here's what it looks like at 10pm......

This is going to go on ALL night into late tomorrow morning, take a small break and then start up again tomorrow afternoon. That front that is showing on the tv stretches all the way to Texas.

I know it doesn't look like much on the ground but you have to realize that very little of it is snow. The weather man just said that the area I live in will have well over 1 inch of sleet along with 4-6 inches of snow all mixed up together - Yeah.

The news channel has had a record number of accidents reported already this evening and are suggesting that everyone who possibly can to stay in until WEDNESDAY at least.....great!

Pretty sure all of my fare weathered relatives are just laughing their heads off about now. I'm sure it's warm and sunny in California, Texas and Florida. But I know the truth that deep down you're jealous and really want to be here!

What will we get....

The frozen precipitation mix started falling from the sky on my way home from work. Unfortunately it was in the form of freezing rain. I don't want freezing rain or sleet or ice, please-o-please just let it snow.

Between 6-12 inches of snow would be GREAT!! I have several people to take pictures of tomorrow if we get SNOW. Pictures sliding on ice just doesn't quite have the same ring, so please change over to snow.

Selling some things....

As I told you in an earlier post I upgraded my Cricut and am selling my smaller one. It's the Personal Cricut Cutter and is in excellent condition. I have the paperwork that goes with it but not the box. I do have two cutting mats that are both very slightly used.

I also upgraded my Xyron to a larger size when my old one broke. I like to be prepared and have 4 refill cartridges for the 510 Xyron (which doesn't work) and of course they don't work on the new/larger size Xyron I just got.

(2) 18' Permanent Refills (1) 7' Magnet (1) 18' Laminate

If anyone is interested let me know. Otherwise I'll sell them on Ebay. I'm also going to sell several Stampin' Up stamp sets that I've collected over the years. I have more than any one person needs and I'm downsizing (actually I've outgrown my space and the clutter is really bothering me). Many of the sets I'm going to sell haven't even been mounted yet........yes it's that bad. I semi cleaned my craft room/basement today while waiting for the glass technician. Who by the way showed up and looked at my window and said "yep I know what the problem is". He went on to tell/show me that the "clips" that are suppose to be on the bottom of my window are missing. So he's bringing a new piece of glass tomorrow (with the clips on it).

Also, the Wii fit that I ordered online showed up today.
Now I just have to use it!! Pretty sure it doesn't do any good just sitting in the living room.

Plug for Schwans

By the time I left work last night I had no desire to go into Kroger's with a hundred other people buying their dinner and decided to head home in hopes of finding something at the house to fix. While my heart was set on rotisserie chicken, the only chicken at the house was this.....
I do admit to living in the country and it is technically a farm and this is our chicken.....this is not however what I think of when I want a whole fryer to cook. I will feed, water, and collect the eggs from the chickens. I WILL NOT butcher and clean them - I'll not eat chicken if that's what is required. I'm not a "farm" girl, just live on one.

So, since the whole fryer was obviously out of the question I dug through the freezer until I found a package of beef tips in gravy from Schwan's. We love these any way you fix them. Last night I turned it into a stir fry with frozen Asian vegetables and rice. Dinner was ready in under 15 minutes and tasted great! You've got to try these.
You can order Schwan's from their website. They'll deliver the food to your doorstep even if you're not home (they pack it in a freezer bag)! How cool is that.

Working windows

You don't realize how much you use your driver's side window or how much you depend on that little button to make it go up and down until it no longer works. This past summer a rock decided to enter my car via my driver's side window which of course was up at the time. My insurance company (State Farm) was great and had a glass technician out within two days to fix my window. Several weeks after that my window wouldn't work, but later that day it worked and I didn't think anything of it. Weeks later it did the same thing. This went on for several months until right before Christmas it stopped working all together.

Hoping it would just "fix" itself again I let it go for a while until I finally hit a point this week in which I just couldn't stand not having a working window. My brother came out to fix it. He and my father removed the outer door shell and then pressed the window button to see what the problem was....well low and behold my window worked. They played around for a minute trying to get it to not work, put the door back together, made the window go up and down a few more times, and came to the conclusion that I didn't know how to press the button to make my window work.

I got in the car the next morning to go to work and decided to roll my window down for a sec just because I could and my window doesn't work! I tried it several times on the way to work with no luck. I decided to call my insurance company when I got to work to see if the tech could come back to look at the window. Of course the glass company doesn't think they've done anything that will make it not work but are very nice about coming out today to look at it anyway. They think the motor/regulator is bad and suggest I buy one to have today just in case. So I call Saturn and speak with the tech there (who I'm pretty sure thinks I'm quite the idiot - I've called him more than once now with really odd questions). He tells me that if my window worked when my brother had the shell off then there's nothing wrong with the motor, he thinks the window isn't adjusted correctly.....glass problem, not mechanical.

So when I left for lunch with two coworkers I decided to push that "down" button to prove that my window doesn't work and guess what happened.....the window went down! Problem was it went down REALLY crocked. It was so off that when I made it go back up it there was about an inch gap that the glass didn't cover. I had to get out and guide/move it into place. I decided not to hit that button anymore until the tech looks at it. I'm staying at home today until he gets here, knowing my luck thus far with this window if I left he and my father would push the button and the window would go up/down just like it rolled out from the factory.

Hopefully the tech will show up soon and I'll have a working window again!

Happy Bday Grand MaLou

Today is my mother's birthday. While I won't reveal her age, I can tell you she's 20 years older than me (I'm helping plan my 20th reunion this year)!!

These pictures aren't the best quality, but then again they are rather OLD.......

Mid-week drag

I just looked at the clock thinking it was almost time to go home and was extremely disappointed to see that it's only 3:30pm - good grief Charlie Brown. I don't typically leave here at 5pm like most but was hoping that we were almost to that point in time just in case.

This day is taking FOREVER.

I was up way too late last night and am dog tired today. Must admit for some reason I have accomplished a lot of work today in spit of that, but man am I ever ready to go home.

I'm thinking a Kroger rotisserie chicken along with a salad sounds pretty good for dinner....and easy, looooove the easy part. I've had Honey Nut Cheerios everynight for dinner so far this week due to the fact that I haven't been home before 8pm. While I need to stay late tonight to get more work done, I really don't think its going to happen.

Chicken, salad, a glass of red wine, maybe one tv show and bed sounds like the order of events for my evening.

Ever After

I decorated the booth for Joyce's Bridal again this year for the annual Ever After Bridal Show. I think this was the best turn out they've had for the event since I've been decorating. I gave out a lot of business cards.....hopefully I'll get some business from it!!

Above is the completed booth, just didn't have the candles lit yet. With the exception of the mannequins and clothing, everything else was in my car!!

I really should have taken a pic of my car.

I made this sign Saturday night with my Cricut and vinyl sheeting. The longest part of the process was lining all the letters up on the canvas board. I'm happy with the way it turned out.

I love my Cricut. If you craft at all it's a very worthy investment. Actually I just recently upgraded to the largest Cricut and will be selling my smaller one....so if you know anyone interested. It's in excellent condition.

I was told we'd be using brown since it's still so popular and I made the suggestion to put lime/kiwi green with it. My suggestion wasn't met with much enthusiasm but I personally love the outcome of the green & brown. I think all involved were pleasantly surprised at how good the two colors look together. Just think what this would look like with fresh flowers....lime green hydrangea and button poms and green roses and and green goddess calla lily and bells of Ireland....

Arielle again modeled during the fashion show. I was really far away so my pics aren't that great but you'll get the idea. Of course she looked great....

Good news, while Arielle's pic was uploading I checked my email - I have two people who have contacted me from the show!!

YAHHHHHH!

Saturday Morning

It's Saturday morning and I'm drinking my second cup of coffee, sitting at my computer making out my mental to-do list for the weekend:

1) Wrap presents for Matthew's birthday party this afternoon. (My nephew is having a skating party for his birthday - he was 6 on Jan 15th - Happy Birthday Matthew!!) Oh and yes I will be skating....loved skating when I was younger....haven't been for a while but I'm sure it's like riding a bike!

2) Pack car for bridal show tomorrow (do wish the temp outside was above the single digits for this task - oh well). Items required (3) 7 ft columns, (2) 6 ft columns, (2) 6 ft poles to connect columns, (4) 4x6 net lights to hang from poles, (2) sheer curtains to mask lights,(2) 3 ft columns with mirror tops, (2) column topper floral arrangements in brown & kiwi green, (3) glass pedestal vases, (2) vase floral arrangements in brown & kiwi green, (1) 3" white floating candle disk, (8) mirror tiles, (9) 3" round vases with kiwi green 2" floating candles, (2) lrg round black wrought iron standing candelabras with white candle and floral ring, (2) 5-candle standing black wrought iron standing candelabras with white candles, (4) brown satin bows for candelabras, (4-5) sets of lights for under table's, brown & kiwi satin to swag front table and column's in background, extension cords, business cards, lighter, sign.

3) "Make" floral arrangements for the top of the columns and glass pedestal vases! I guess this should go before #2. Can't pack it in my car until it's done.

4) "Make" a sign with Cricut so that people walking by know that the booth is for "Joyce's Bridal" and the set design is by "Your Event Designer" aka me.

5) Make sure all satin to be used is un-wrinkled!

6) Attend the skating party in DuQuoin @ 2pm today.

7) Tomorrow I'll need to be in Marion by 8am when the event center doors open to start the decorating process. We'll have 3 1/2 hours to have the booth presentable with 1/2 hour to change clothes and make thyself presentable. The bridal show will last for four hours, then break down/cleanup, unpack the car and put everything back into the garage and I should be back in my pajama's somewhere between 7 & 8 tomorrow evening. I plan to get some sushi before I head home tomorrow evening for supper.

8) Take pictures of booth.

9) Take pictures of Arielle who will be modeling at the bridal show.

I had intended to go into work this morning before the B'day party but when I started to really think about everything I need to do today I decided my sanity would best be kept if I stayed at home. Of course now I'm stressed out about what I was going to do at work today that obviously won't get done....need to let it go - it'll just have to wait until next week.

Considering my to-do list, guess I need to get with it and off of here.
Have a great weekend!

Red dot bathroom

From Red Bathroom

This Christmas I found a new shower curtain that I thought was really cute. My nephew was less than impressed with the red dots. I redecorate my bathroom all of the time because it the cheapest room to do when I'm in the mood for a change. It's a really small room with tile floor and I painted the walls a pail yellow (which goes with just about anything). I think I have about 6 complete decorating sets to change it up when the mood hits.

I redecorated into the red while he was at school and when he came home and first walked by it he just stood there. He asked me where the shower curtain came from and I told him, he continued to stand there and turned around and said hmmmmm. That was it. I don't think he likes the red or the dots. Prior to this it was blue & brown.....his favorite colors.

This towel set was on sale at Sears on black Friday which made my new shower curtain & decor a little more festive! It's a little more outdoorsey than I am, but I liked the look all the same. I'm going to take the green Christmas towels out soon but plan to stick with the red/brown combo for a little while. In part I must admit to aggravate my nephew!

From Red Bathroom

New Year's Resolution

Okay, while waiting for the technician to show up and install the internet I decided to do a little spring cleaning. Actually it's the spring cleaning from last year that I never got around too. For way too many months now I've been unable to "put away" all of my clothes which is a sign of 1 of 2 things 1) I have too many clothes or 2) I need more space (which is so true I really need to find a house to buy or build).

Since #2 isn't going to happen in the immediate future and I absolutely can't stand the fact that my room isn't clean I decided to weed out some of my clothing. I'm now taking 5 LARGE bags (garbage bags) of clothes to Goodwill in the morning. Sadly there's probably an entire bag that still have the store tags on them. I went through all of my dresser drawers and every single piece of clothing in my closet. I was agitated at my shoes a few weeks ago and got rid of about 20 pairs then when I couldn't get them all in my closet. While my closet now isn't picture perfect like the nicely organized closets with like 10 total pieces of clothing that they show on TV, it looks so much better.

So onto my New Year's Resolution.....I decided while cleaning out my clothing that I need to stop buying things - seriously I blow a lot of moola. With the economy as it is and since I have absolutely, positively no more room, my resolution is to not buy things that I don't really need. Easier said than done of course because I can always justify to myself why I "NEED" something. I think this resolution will be much harder than dieting, I love to shop of course I love to eat too. And to make one resolution counter act the other, I got rid of all the clothes that I've outgrown...errrr I mean that shrunk in the dryer. I want to lose some serious pounds before I go to Florida this summer and I just got rid of my smaller sized clothes. So if I'm successful at losing a few pounds, I'll have to go buy new clothes!! hehe

Connected

Great News!! I'm once again connected to the internet. They installed my internet satellite a few minutes ago and I got the wireless router step up so both computers are up and going on the internet!! I decided to take the day off from work to make sure I understood what ever technical info that they wanted to pass along. So now I have the rest of the day to surf.


I'm so very excited to be connected again, I didn't realize how much I was on the computer until I couldn't connect. Of course this means no more excuses for lack of posts. And the best part of the new service is that it's much faster than the old service.......and cheaper!

Book Review - Twilight

Sorry I haven't been on here in FOREVER. I've been without internet at home and have been waaaaay too busy at work to "play". We should be getting our new internet satellite hooked up this week!! As soon as I have internet service at home again I promise to get back to regular posts. I've been catching some heat from the Aunts for my lack of posts. This will just have to hold you over for a short period of time until I'm hooked up and running again.

I was off during Christmas and New Years, with all of the deaths that happened in our family over the past year I'd describe this Christmas as "reserved". My mother woke up Christmas morning sick so we had to cancel the Galloway Christmas and there was just something missing from the Shurtz's on Christmas Eve.

I ended up with a bad sinus infection the day after Christmas that didn't clear up until after New Years. The sinus infection caused some major issues with vertigo that landed me in bed literally for a week. Everytime I tried to even sit up I was dizzy!

The only good thing to come from that was that I had 7 days of laying in bed READING!! It was the only thing I could do other than watch TV. I had put off reading the four book Twilight saga because of the fact that it was advertised as a tween series and I thought I'd find it well, boring. In the 7 days of laying around I read the entire 4-book saga TWICE. I absolutely loved it. I'm letting others read my books right now but plan to read it again when I get them back....loved it!! I really,really hope that Stephanie Meyer continues that series - at least one more book. It was written in a way that I feel like the characters are real and I want to know what happens next, I'm not satisfied with where the story ends. I'm a junkie, I want more..... I haven't seen the movie and probably won't until it's released on DVD. The only cast member that somewhat fit my mental picture is Bella so I'm not holding much hope for loving the movie. I'll admit I typically enjoy the book much more than I like the movie rendition. In fact I can't name a single movie which I'd read the book first that I like the movie any where near as much as the book.

On a personal note, not much else has really gone on since I posted last. I've taken quite a few more pictures which I promise to get up on the other blog sometime next week. Last weekend was a bridal show in Murphysboro. I decorated the booth for Joyce's Bridal (Aunt Eileen) and will be doing that again this weekend in Marion for them. The booth in Marion should look pretty darn good, I'll be sure to get pics up of it. Arielle will be modeling at that one too.

I've got 5 weddings booked to decorate and 2 to photography already this year along with decorating a graduation party in May and most of the seniors I took pics of in the fall want spring pictures. So needless to say I should be keeping pretty busy....big shock to you all I know. Just booked my reservation in Destin, Florida for my cousins wedding the last weekend in June......now time to DIET, can't hang out on a beach in Florida without wearing a bathing suit and this body the way it looks right now isn't getting anywhere near a bathing suit.

Well, I think that's enough of an update at the present time. I'll be in touch again soon....promise! Oh yah, didn't get Christmas cards done this year - sorry.