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.

the man in black

timmy: "mommy, when will i go to heaven?"
mommy: "when you're a very, very old man and you die; then you'll go to heaven."
timmy: "oh."

and yesterday: "mommy, when ethan hits me, it makes me sick, you know. and if he hits me too much, i will just throw him away. i will throw him in the landfill. and then i will tell the digger to come and get him. and the digger will take him home. and he will learn his lesson."

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.