june 12-of-12

this month i decided to skip the frustration my desktop computer surely has in plan for me and go all digital. it ain't fancy, but it's done. :)

next month, timmy and i will be in chicago visiting the big kids and arie. squee! we will have sooo much fun - and should make for a more interesting 12-of-12, too!

may 12-of-12!

it's getting easier and easier to post just my psd file for my 12-of-12s, but the pictures are taken and the words are written, so i say good enough!

now, if you'll excuse me, i must return to michael, who is resisting his nap and shouting, "bob! baaaaahhhhhb!" i don't know who this bob character is, but i wish he'd just answer already. i could use the help! :)

april 12-of-12

i am not one iota more organized today than i was last month at this time. what is with me? i don't know, but something's gotta give . . .

timmy's preschool is holding a board meeting to decide whether to continue after this school year. it seems they can make $30,000-ish more if they use the preschool space as daycare instead (they have a daycare, as well, but have a classroom or two of preschoolers who don't attend daycare). can't blame them for wanting more money, but . . . they're part of the local college and the teaching students receive some of their classroom training in the preschool. i want them to continue, at least for one more year. after that, timmy will be in kindergarten, so i won't care . . . i'm small and selfish, i know, but i needs to look out for mines own, right?

easter was hard for me this year, as evidenced in my 12-of-12 layout. tim was supposed to be off that weekend. alas, it did not happen. again. he had to do some sort of "extra patrol" way out in some other county, miles and miles away. he did get to see timmy wake up, and came back in the evening. i did not make a ham, or anything else, for that matter. i offered left-over pizza to timmy for lunch, but he'd eaten so much candy he wasn't hungry. and i let him. (today we're back to our normal no-candy-ness.) i think the week of grey, rainy weather probably added to my emotional slump.

also? my desktop is on its last leg - well, last pre-computer-guy leg, anyway, so i am unable to print my pictures on photo paper and stick them on cardstock. instead, a very plain-jane digital version:

in other news, i have decided i am too fat to exist as is. enough is enough! ish. i do not know what i will do about it, but i am ready to do something. i have begun researching nutritional requirements. i figure i'll start there. i have never had my cholesterol checked (i know!), so a call to my doctor is on the horizon. also a call to our insurance company to determine whether a dietician's consultation is covered.

as for exercise? well, for the most part, this will have to be cobbled together from the tiny snippets of time i have available due to michael's nap schedule. as soon as school is out for the summer, i will only have my own boy at home, so off to the ymca we will go. ethan and timmy can go into the ymca "kid zone" or into the pool with me, but almost michael's entire waking time is taken up by eating and preparing for sleep. next school year, ethan will be in kindergarten and michael will be old enough to join timmy in the kid zone.

aaaaanyway, i do not know how i will get rid of my fatness yet. all i know is i have never been on a "diet" and i am not willing to try one now. whatever i do, it has to be something i'm willing to do forever.

(join me now for a prayer: please, dear God, do not let me read this post one month from now without my having done anything to help myself! :D)

January's 12-of-12

after all my planning and scheming to scraplift other people's 12-of-12 layouts, i ended up using the same ol' format. and i think i'll just stick with it. it's so easy, and getting the day documented is the point, so . . . we had a busy day yesterday! it was really hard for me to narrow the photos down to just twelve.

after putting this thing together this morning, i've learned two things. first, i have learned i am not above begging. i plan to call stan and beg him to get my laptop in sooner. i'll pay more; whatever. the second thing i learned is that i should not have been putting off taking the old desktop in for service. it is s-l-o-w. and i can't work like i'm accustomed, with fifteen different applications all going at the same time. uh, no way. one thing at a time, and so slow i had time to change laundry loads while each picture was opening.

still plugging away

even though cz's design your life class at bigpicturescrapbooking.com is finished, i am not. i am so not. but i'm still plugging away.

this, for example, is week 8, sketch 2. it was originally a 2-page 8.5x11 spread, but i hated it. so i changed it to one 12x12 page and now i like it. oh, i would do some things differently if only i had planned ahead. the topic was emphasis. using big photos to create emphasis. but i wanted to continue my theme of using my most current photos to do the layouts and i didn't have a Christmas picture great enough to print in 8.5x11 size.

you can see, however, that i did use the design principle of repetition. red buttons (i'm not much of an embellishment user), red in the photos - and if i'd planned ahead, i would have printed the title in red, too. oh, well; live and learn. also unheard of? i included a picture of me! chubby and tired looking - yep, it's me. :)

p.s. a dirty pool board is a (most often) wooden game board handmade by the dad of the family for the kid of the family when s/he grows up and moves away. andrew got his the year before last. dirty pool is similar to wahoo and is a family tradition. we play whenever we can, but it's required on Christmas Eve and pretty much all day Christmas. this year, timmy and i basically got out the marbles, rolled the dice and counted the "steps" the marbles made. no rhyme or reason to our game. maybe next year.

p.p.s. tim's a rebel. he did not wear his Christmas jammies. stinkin' daddy!

December Twelve-of-Twelve

i'm not doing well this fall/winter with the whole blogging thing, or with the whole twelve-of-twelve thing, either! i anxiously awaited december 12th, only to have my memory erased at 11:59pm on the 11th and not think of it again until yesterday. what's up with that?! so, instead of the usual, present my december 12-of-12:

november's 12-of-12

several days late in posting my 12-of-12, but when you take into account how long it's been sincei posted at all, it doesn't seem so bad, now does it?

something so funny to me: i printed out my text to review for typos and found none. then, after i'd printed it onto the cardstock (no going back), i re-read the first sentence: "Once again, I did not beat Timmy up." lol!

what i meant to say was that i failed to wake up before timmy. but i suppose the other possible meaning is also true. i did not assault my little guy, either. once again. :)

October's 12-of-12

october's 12-of-12 was fraught with difficulties. for example, i forgot about it for an hour or two first thing in the morning. then, i forgot again mid-day. then, my camera battery went dead because i forgot to charge it.

ah, well, i improvised, and here's my layout:

quite the artist, aren't i? :)

so much to say . . .

well, this blog certainly isn't doing its job of recording all my memories. stinkin' blog. when will they come up with one that just pulls the data out of my mind and updates itself daily? that's the blog i want!

today is october 12th, which of course is twelve-of-twelve day! i remembered yesterday. and forgot by this morning. but i recovered quickly when i saw susan's email. so i'm taking pictures of my life today. my boring, house-is-not-tidy life.

also, i plan to work on my week 2 layouts for cz's design your life class. i finally finished week 1 the other day. this first one is a 12x12.

and this 8.5x11 2-page spread (and not a very good scan).

i am so insanely proud of myself! for actually finishing the first assignments, yes, but also for my newly developed ability to put all my worries and obsessiveness aside and just do it! it always takes me forever to come up with any idea and then i obsess about it and about the paper and everything else until it's just torture. not this time, baby! i am going to jump right in every week. the topics of my assignment pages almost don't matter to me. i do not need the "perfect" topic. i'm learning about design. my pages will slowly but surely become more perfect as i go along.

in other news . . . preschool. ugh. timmy is engaged in a battle over who rules timmy. thursday when i went to pick him and ethan up, i passed ms. brenae, our classroom helper, who said timmy politely told ms. abby (another helper), "i will not cooperate with you." (big sigh) as it turns out, he did eventually do what ms. abby wanted him to do. but only after he'd made it clear he was doing it on his terms. (heaving another big sigh)

oh! the weather has been so nice here lately that the boys and i drive with our windows down - especially when we go past the several blocks of street construction on the way to wal mart. they love to see which piece of equipment is working and which workers might be taking a break at that moment. aaaaaaanyway, the other day we were driving along with the windows down. timmy rested his foot up on the door's armrest and said sweetly, "look, mommy, i'm just like you - one of my leg whiskers is blowing in the wind!" God love him.

september's 12-of-12

i finished my september 12-of-12 layout in record time! (this will change, come january, when i will abandon this super-simple layout and begin shamelessly scraplifting some of the other layouts i've seen there.) once again, by mid-morning, i completely forgot to take pictures. but i did remember gain right at the end of supper time. i also forgot a self-portrait again. oh, well.

we didn't leave the house all day. hurricane ike, along with the tropical depression (can't remember its name) off the west coast of mexico, has wreaked havoc here in kansas.

nothing like texas - i'm not whining or comparing our plight to theirs. i'm just saying it's been really rainy here and that'll continue for another week or so. which means we will not have much time to play outside. which means (again, i'm not trying to compare my teeny problems with those who've had to leave their flooded homes) we will most probably have time-out-o-rama at our house. our little guy needs his outside time. i'm not opposed to a little fun in the mud, but not all day every day! or maybe . . .

what a day already!

today is the 12th of the month. 12-of-12. i could fill my page with pictures of temper tantrums and time-outs. maybe even if today were 30-of-30, lol. but i'm determined to keep my patience and my good humor. i have taken just one photo of one time-out.

yesterday i finished my pre-work layout for cathy zielske's "design your life" class at big picture scrapbooking. it was torture, i'll be honest. even though we were given exact measurements, colors and basic layout (nine squares).

my scanner isn't twelve inches wide, so i scanned from one edge, then from the other and combined them in photoshop elements. i wonder how other people do that . . .

i'm still worried i will not be successful in this class. i have an abstract picture in my mind of exactly how i want my pages to look and what i want them to "do," but rarely can i translate that idea into reality. (much like how i cannot translate the precise mathematical calculations i make on the golf course into a long straight drive.)

by the end of this class, i expect to know a lot about design. i also expect to have a much higher level of scrapbooking comfort. i want to be able to put a photo and story down on paper in a pleasing manner and in a reasonable time frame and with a minimum amount of emotional discomfort. that's it! so, cz, don't fail me!

designing my life

i signed up for cathy zielske's design your life class at big picture scrapbooking! i'm nervous and excited. i'm alternately filled with doubt and squealing with anticipation.

when cz first announced the class, i really, really wanted to do it. but then i talked myself out of it. the money. the commitment. my lack of scrap-esteem. and then i just forgot all about it. until my sista-girl moon asked if i was taking the class.

tim's all for the class, especially since i don't have to go anywhere to take it. back when i was still a full-time wage earner and working so much my family rarely caught sight of me, it was tim who requested i get a hobby in the hopes i'd gain some balance. now . . . if i had my old paycheck, i might be as obsessed with my hobby as i once was with my work, lol!

but, speaking of my current obsessions . . . i've got to record this little timmy story before i forget:

over this summer, we've developed a new habit. maybe not a great one, but a fun one. we eat dinner on our bed while watching "ice road truckers" on the history channel. last week, tim bought timmy some "ice road ice cream dots" for dessert. last night tim was working and timmy and i had bierocks. but i digress.

timmy asked me yesterday while we were eating, "are you married to daddy?" i acknowledged it and he said, "i want to marry you, too." i know every little boy wants to marry his mommy at about this age, but it still melted my heart. ah, i love that little guy!

the kind of day (week) i'm having

i finished my 12-of-12 layout for august. and a couple hours later i removed it from the scanner to put it into the album and i read it. oh, boy. i got the date right! but, my journaling sounds like it was written by an esl student. i flipped two pictures around. i left the end of one sentence off. i misspelled many words.

but you know what? it is, as written, an accurate portrayal of my day. my real life. one day many years from now, my descendents will read this page and know their grandfather and great-uncle drove me crazy on august 12, 2008. and that my house was a mess.

july's 12-of-12

the twelfth of this month dawned grey and rainy. just like the three days preceding it. yuck. i needs me some sunshine. (maybe that's why i used such a retina-searing color of cardstock?) and timmy needs him some outside time.

but . . . i powered past my feelings of blah-ness and made sure my camera was ready to go. i lived my life. i took my pictures. once again, i forgot to take pictures of meals. however! i did type in the correct date this month. this is progress.

i hope my photos next month will be shockingly improved after my photography class (which was scheduled to start on the 10th but was canceled at the very last minute b/c the instructor's wife was involved in an auto accident - she's fine, and we'll make it up with a class meeting added to the end). i plan to learn the heck out of it. 

happyccino is my only friend

i sometimes suffer insomnia. for weeks, out of the blue, i wake up many times during the night. so annoying! and i'm a little sleepy the next day, but nothing too traumatic.

but those other times. ah, jeez. i have trouble falling asleep until the wee hours of the night. i watch tv for a while, i read for a while. then i give up and lie there in the dark trying to bore myself to sleep.

and hey - if it happened only once in a while, i wouldn't complain. well, ok, maybe just a little. but i wouldn't need my friend, my love, the english toffee cappuccino tim brings me when he comes home from work in the morning following my night of sleeplessness. my happyccino.

i try to stay away from caffeine normally. but, oh, the sweet nectar of wakefulness. when i need you, you're there for me with no questions. steaming away my sluggishness. fortifying my foggy mind with your frothy faithfulness. calming me with creamy caffeination. and surely my trembling appendages are your way of ensuring my body burns off the extra calories you provide? oh, how i love thee.

plus, isn't that cup fabulous? i am inspired by the color combination and the gentle waves and that bold font on the horizontal strip. i'm not kidding. i'm going to translate this cup into a scrapbook page. maybe about happyccino.

june's 12-of-12

i finished my june 12-of-12 page today. not on june 30th, but today. go me! something i've noticed these past three months i've been doing the 12-of-12 thing? i forget to take pictures around mid-day. i guess i forget often throughout the day. see below? no pictures of meals. oh, we did have meals - at the table, talking about our day. just no proof. until next month, when i will accomplish my goal of remembering to take pictures all day!

i love the shot of timmy peeing on a tree in the back yard. twenty years ago when andrew was potty training, i would never have allowed such a thing. now? who cares? i'm just thrilled he's keeping peepees out of his undies! when we travel - even to the grocery store - we have a potty seat in the cargo area. no peepees on trees in public. that you know of.

next year, i'm copying sara's layout, as seen on susan's 12-of-12 blog. but you know what? the simplicity of slapping it all down on a sheet of cardstock and being done with it is very freeing. i suffer from low scrap-esteem and foiled perfectionism, so i finish very few pages, even though i have journal page after page of ideas and even sketches. i just feel more successful and want to start and complete more pages after this. after doing last month's 12-of-12 page, i completed two more within a couple days.

if i never do another page other than these 12-of-12s, my family will still have an accurate record of our daily lives. and that's really the point, isn't it?

12 of 12! 12 of 12!

i started this blog so i'd have a place to post my 12-of-12 layouts. a little pressure, you know? not that anybody sees this, but they could.

on the 12th of april, i took my pictures. on the 13th of april, i edited and cropped them. on the rest of the days of april and the first ten days of may, i stared at them and moved them around and just could. not. decide what to do with them. i suffer low scrap-esteem. i don't really know anything about using embellishments, so the few layouts i've completed have been very minimalist, which i like, but i do wish i could embellish, too.

on may 11th, at 11pm, i threw caution to the wind, printed out my minimalist journaling, slapped it all on some cardstock, and viola!

i don't like the look of it. i've never scribbled on a layout before (and incidentally, after i scanned this, i "colored" the date on the last line, too). i won't use this style on anything else, but i did decide i'd do exactly this on may's layout. how freeing!

what's most important is that i am documenting my everyday life. when my grandchildren wonder what life was like way back in 2008, they'll be able to look at my layouts and know. there isn't much detail in these particular layouts, but completing them does inspire me to go forth and multiply (my scrapbook pages).

like this one. actually, now that i look at it, i think this might be my "sketch" and not the scan of my actual page, but they look pretty much the same.

my first 12-of-12

seems like such a simple concept. take twelve pictures of your everyday life on the 12th of each month and then scrap them. cathy zielske's first try was what caught my attention, causing me to check out susan keuter's 12-of-12 blog and sign up for her email reminders.

talked my friend susan into it, and maybe her sister sharon, too. they, of course, had an exciting april 12th. they went to a quilt show or auction (something creative and exciting)

i didn't leave the house all day. timmy was feverish and woke up several times in the night, so like any good . . . uh, tired . . . mom would do for her baby, i snuggled in mommy's bed for a while watching my friends tigger & pooh.

he finally got hungry, though, so i made oatmeal. then, since i was up anyway, i decided to load and start the dishwasher, vacuum the living room and do some laundry. oh, and the laundry remains undone. but i did make some no-bake cookies. that's just as good, right? no, really - wouldn't you rather have no-bake cookies than clean socks? no . . . me neither.

aaaaaaaaaaanyway, my first 12-of-12 day turned out extrmely boring. but at least i put in an attempt. i even chose which twelve pics i'd use and "sketched" a layout in pse. sent it to susan and sharon (& susan keuter), too. with march 12th 2008 on it. yeah. march. when i finally get around to actually scrapping it, though, i'll use the correct month just to make it interesting.