snow and more snow

it seriously has not stopped snowing in days. Every day the kids have a 2 hour delay. They are keeping up with the roads well enough, driving is still a little treacherous. I am fine not going anywhere, I like sitting in my nice warm house and play on the computer. Even going to Karate is a chore. Gabrielle has a step up day to our Highschool tomorrow, she is all excited about it. I hope they will still be going and the weather doesn't mess it up for her. She keeps talking about how much better the lunches are going to be. Amazing the things that are important :)

I am finally done with my 365 book and it's posted on Shutterfly,

 here is the link. I am quite happy with the way it looks and this way it's doable for me. I don't like doing the same thing all the time, I like the look, but I know myself, I won't finish the year if I keep the pages the same. I am ready to tackle this year also, it really gives me that little extra push to take pictures.

Now I can have some fun with pages again, here are a couple I just finished this morning

I am trying to upload a couple of photos, but am having trouble....

here they are :) like I said, I was really having some fun with Katrina's tutorial. Last night I took a look at our pool in the darkness and couldn't resist getting my tripod and taking some pictures. Phil kept yelling for me to come to bed LOL. It was so much fun though. Let me see if I can get at least one of those...

I just loved the feeling of cold and loneliness you get from this picture. You can see the reflection of my window candle and the falling snow looks like streaks because of the slow shutterspeed. Nothing like playing with your camera :)

Well, it's still snowing outside, it's sickening! We are going to have pasta tonight, so I have to get the sauce going, otherwise we won't make it to Karate tonight (not that I feel like going) Thanks for visiting and have a wonderful day!!!

2010 is here!!!

It seems like yesterday that everybody was shaking in their boots, thinking the world would come to a standstill at the approach of the year 2000 and what a disappointment when absolutely nothing happened :) Can you even believe that was 10 years ago? Wow! Amazing how fast our life goes by, we get older without really taking too much notice and then something like this comes along to throw it right in your face. It's just a little reminder to enjoy your life and not take it for granted I suppose.

We just got back from watching Avatar, we braved the snow that hasn't stopped all day and I was surprised that the theater was still packed. It was awesome!!! Totally fairytale like but so well done, especially in 3D. Gorgeous scenery! The kids couldn't get over how much they liked it, hubby was the only one who kind of smirked at the story but that's okay, it was still great! Who wants reality every time you watch a movie, you might as well just watch the news all day, right?
Yesterday I finally managed to read through Katrina Kennedy's tutorial on capturing lights, in particular Christmas lights. Man, was that an eye opener. I put my camera on a tripod and used the self timer so I wouldn't have to touch it again. Look at this

You get this awesome starburst around the lights. Isn't it the coolest? I really had to crank up the ISO for the shot, thank goodness I have Noiseware, which btw. is just an awesome program, it has saved so many photos for me, I use it all the time.

Here is a page I did today using the pictures from that shoot last night

I would have never thought of moving my shutterspeed this far down, I am so grateful for this tutorial, I was all excited yesterday! I wanted to take more pictures of the tree, but now a strand of lights isn't working, isn't that just grand? I have to fix it first, otherwise no pictures :)

Okay, I am off to a great start in the New Year, I updated my blog, aren't you just proud of me? :) Now I have to finish my 365 pages so that I can start the new year. I really enjoy the project and can't wait to get this year's done, so I can hold it!

Sounding off for tonight!

Happy New Year

I can't believe the last day of the year is here! Where did this whole year go? Well, here is hoping next year will be healthy and just plain ordinary! I can live with that, no bad surprises, no health problems, Phil's tests will all be normal and we can go on vacation without worries :) All our friends and family will be fine, their problems will be in the past, good health to all of them too! That is my wish for the coming year!
We don't really have any plans for today. The kids are looking forward to staying up late and getting their special drink tonight ( a drop of champagne in orange juice, the glass edges dipped in juice and sugar to coat them. They think it's the coolest thing! Plus I still have some old Bleigiessen stuff, we might dig that out and do it over again :). For those of you who don't know it, it's a german tradition. You have these little lead (very lightweight) figurines that are being placed on a spoon and heated over a candle until liquid. You then dump the content very rapidly into a bowl of cold water and they take on these weird shapes. You are then supposed to look up the shape in a booklet provided to see what good luck is being promised with it. It's just fun to dump the stuff and see what happens!

I just finished my Shutterfly book about Advent, I had a coupon and it expired tonight, so I just made it. It came out cute I think. Here is the link if you want to take a peek

http://community.shutterfly.com/gallery/post/start.sfly?postId=/gallery/1/post/GMGDJgwbOGDdswbAbVkwWO

That's pretty much all I have been working on these last past days, so I have no new pages to show you (I am sure you are crying right now :))
The kids and I met my friends from Altoona at the Mall yesterday (waving). We had lunch together and did some shopping. It was so good to see them, albeit a little chaotic with all the kids in tow, plus it gets so hot now, wearing a coat to the mall is no fun and then carrying bags on top of that is almost too much! We will have to get together and do nothing some other day, so that we'll have some time to chat and not play hangman with the kids :) (not that that wasn't fun)
I also talked to my brother yesterday. It's always nice to get an update from Germany, I talked to my sister Barbara the day after my birthday also, I hadn't heard from her in so long, it was really nice. So in the last week or so I have spoken to all of them, cause I called Edith and got to talk to Brita too. yeah! I still have family. Sometimes I feel sad for the kids. They seem to miss having cousins around here like all of their classmates do. Not much I can do about that.
Well, I am leaving you with good wishes for the NewYear, stay healthy and my resolution for the New Year is to keep my blog more up-to-date :)

Still alive!

But you all knew that anyway, didn't you? It's just that life really got into the way of blogging, I couldn't even tell you exactly why. It seems that whenever I have a few minutes I'd rather spend them on getting a page done, so forgive me and my resolve for the New Year is going to keep this blog in a more timely fashion, so come and kick my butt when I don't (heehee)
Well, Christmas has come and gone, it was a busy time, as all you mothers out there know, all the preparing, buying, decorating etc seems to take forever. Of course this year I was so behind with not having my house in order to begin with. I finally hired somebody to finish my floor in the sunroom, why I didn't do this earlier is beyond me. They came and started on a Wednesday, were finished by Friday and came back the following Tuesday to put my furniture back in the room. Very professional and clean and I had my room back within a week. What a relief! Now all my plants have a place in the light again and hopefully they will stop shedding all their leaves soon :)
The kids' play was great, the girls did a wonderful job with their performances and Michael sang his little heart out. I was very proud of them, especially Rachel, this being her first solo performance. She really pounded her fist on the table with her first "objection" being the defense attorney (the play was called "The not so silent night" and the shepherds were on trial for making too much noise. It was quite good.
It's gotten really cold here, definitely no more Indian Summer :) We have snow and today the sun seems to be coming out, but it's only 22 out there, yuck! The south is starting to look more and more attractive :) We were just talking at breakfast about the times we went to Grenada bk (before kids) and how pretty it was with all the flowers and gorgeous colors. The whole time I was thinking what kind of pictures I could have been taking then, had I known what I know now. Makes me sad and wishing to go to some pretty place so I can shoot something other than my stupid backyard and the cats :) Even Cancun is the same thing all the time...not that I'm spoiled or anything :)
A couple of weeks ago I went to look at my Mozy backup system and I noticed it said it was backing up something like 250 GB. I had just spent months backing up that much, so there couldn't possibly have been that much left to do. That really freaked me out and I went to check my account and there was literally nothing there but what had been backed up the day before. What a shock! I immediately fired off an email and got a response pretty quickly. Sounds like some kind of a glitch in their update or something. I had to download a new link and restart. Fortunately it found all my data on their server and the backup went really rapidly this time. Now I am almost done again and if you know Mozy you know how slow this is. Plus no matter what they say, it really slows my system down when it's running. Once I am done with everything I will set it to run at night only.
Well, the kids are off this week yet, so we have a little mini vacation. Not that we are doing anything out of the ordinary but just not having to rush in the morning is great! Over Christmas I wasn't able to spend much time scrapping or on the computer at all for that matter. I did Daily December pages but I will only do them until the 25th, because I did them more like and Advent calendar, using the biblical quotes out of the kids' calendars for the journaling. I think it will be pretty. Plus I am still doing my 365 pages which account for the every day stuff anyway. I think I will keep doing those next year, I had fun with that project. I won't bore you posting all the December Daily pages, once the book is done, I will post a link to that. Here are the pages I have done in the last month or so. Some of them are the 365 pages. I guess you will be able to tell which ones, they are the ones that match :) I tried to keep all the facing pages similar, so that they will flow in the book. I just hope it will look nice.

These are pages done for PixelCanvas. I really need to get some more pages done for them, they have cute stuff coming out for the new year :)

For Christmas I made Rachel a book with most of the pages I had done about her through 2008. I think she really liked it. Not all pages were great, some I did when I first started scrapping, but they are what they are and she loves looking at herself. Here is a link if you are interested. Like I said, it's not the greatest, but she loves it.
I also made the girls notebooks for which I designed the covers. At first they didn't even realize they were on the front, it was hilarious. Rachel thought, there was some indian girl on the cover...:) Let me see if I can get a copy...

well, they aren't big, but you get the picture (literally :))

Okay, half the morning is gone already. Michael and I have piano lessons today, so I need to practice a little, so I don't waste my money completely :) I will really make an effort to keep this blog going better and then it won't take half the morning to get an update with all the pages....

Indian summer

at least that's what it's been like around here. It has been wonderful these last few days, sunshine and warm, balmy almost. If it could only stay like this until Christmas, give us one day of snow and then warmth again until April when it can really heat up. Oh yes, a girl can dream, right?

The kids' school is putting on a Christmas Play again this year and this time around the girls both got a big part in it. They are so excited and I am so happy for them. Up til now Gabrielle only had little roles and mostly helped out behind the stage and Rachel only sang in the large choir. This time they are prosecutor and defense attorney in the play "The not so Silent Night". Of course now they have play practice at least 3 times a week after school, plus their homework, Karate, dentist appointments etc. Kids today are so busy, how did we ever make it through life. I never had anything after school, all we did was play and that mostly outside. Looking back those were really fun times and we had no clue. I wish I could let my kids have the same childhood but I wouldn't dare let them run around the way we did.

Tomorrow I have to take Sweetie for her surgery, poor thing. It's necessary though, better for everybody. She'll be okay I'm sure...
Last Saturday we were at a friend's son's wedding, it was so pretty. They looked so darn happy, it was adorable. We didn't stay lone because I left the kids at home with Gabrielle babysitting. She was bugging me all day about having her friend come over for a sleepover and when we weren't back by 5 she kept texting me. Argh. I had told her she wasn't allowed to have her come over until I got back. No way am I having another kid over with no supervision. So anyway, we left fairly early, she had her friend over and all were happy. Sunday morning I made them Belgian Waffles, actually that was for dinner, since Helen (the neighbor we go to every Sunday for lunch, my adopted mother) was out with her girls. They were yummy, I made blueberry sauce, pudding, whipped topping, strawberries. Yumm! Now I wish I had taken a picture :) In the afternoon we walked down to the park. The kids played ball and Rachel and Michael played at the playground. There were a lot of people enjoying the sunshine with their kids.

My floor in the sunroom still has not been done, of course it has only been since July, we wouldn't want to give the guy any pressure about rushing him. I think tomorrow I will call somebody else, I can't stand this anymore. My house is such a mess with everything sitting around in the living room and the sunroom having an unprotected floor where every water spill creates a stain now. It will get to the point where we won't be able to finish the floor. It just makes me so mad... let me go back into my happy bubble and think about scrapping :)

Again, these are all in my DesignerDigitals gallery. The following are in my PixelCanvas gallery (which is down at the moment, again) She is transferring to a new site but the old one is down for malicious intrusion. It's hard to run a business when nothing works so many times. Poor thing and Heather too who is one of her designers trying to sell her stuff. Hopefully it will all get worked out really soon.

See my orchid blooming? I am so thrilled about it. It has been dormant for a few years and now all of a sudden it's blooming. Actually by today there are 3 blooms open. Little things like that make me happy (I'm sure you couldn't tell at all)

Hey, my best friend is a grandma!!! They have a brand spanking new grandson. I can't wait to be able to  see him and maybe take some pictures.

Well, maybe I'll have a few minutes now to start a page, I haven't exactly been very prolific this last week. I still have a couple of pages that I did but can't post yet. Oh well. Talk to you all soon. Ciao!