February 2006 - Posts
I'm enjoying my last moment of totally free time today - watching a recorded episode of House from earlier in the week. Once that's over, it's time to get busy.
- 7:45 AM - 8:15 Clean out my car, a.k.a. "Sunny"
- 8:15 AM-9:30 Put away Christmas decorations on the 1st floor.
- 9:30-10:30 Get clean and ready to go out with Mom
- 10:30 Out with Mom!
So last night, between watching Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy, I only 
managed to scrap one page, lol. But I think it's a cute one! I used the Scrapbook-bytes Vintage Artistry kit.
I especially liked the included ribbons. Normally I would have used six different ribbons to get a look like this, but these ribbons were actually all part of one image file. This made it really easy to finish this page in under thirty minutes (should have only taken 15 but I was watching TV )
Well today has felt like a pretty productive day. I finished five of my major items on my "To-Do" list. I'm pretty much exhausted, however. Most of my day was spent studying for and taking my 2nd quiz in my Doctorate class on Statistics. Peter was
such a sweetie to me today. Not only did he put up with my minor freaking every so many minutes as I went nuts about my quiz, but he also went out in the freezing, 18 degree weather to go across the street and get us Subway for lunch. I had the best meatball sub with my favorite baked Lays BBQ chips.
I was pretty annoyed about my test. Mainly because the content that was stated to be on it by the instructor was way more than was indicated. Humph. I managed to pull an 88% despite that and I owe that to Peter. He helped me study so much today and was always there for me to give me a hug and help me stay positive. I think I pretty much wore him out with the whole test taking experience, and he's sleeping next to me on the couch right now as I watch Desperate Housewives.
I loaded the three photo CDs I have from our first two years together, back in 2001-2003. These photos are insane! I can't believe how much smaller the kittys were (and how much larger I was - ugh!). I decided that I'm going to work on a few layouts of our first months together.
Our washer/dryer has needed fixing for quite a while because it doesn't work right, and I went to the Sears web page where I was able to request a service tech to come out next Saturday. I'm hoping it won't cost too much, but regardless, it needs to get taken care of, and I'm just glad I have it scheduled. Tomorrow, Mom and I are spending the day the afternoon together up here checking out some shops, and then I think I'm driving down to Dover to see a friend from college, Kelly, before she and her family move back to the west coast next week. I'm definitely bring my camera, because I want to get some pictures of her and her daughter, Shae - whom I am sure has gotten so big!
Then, it's back up here to make Peter dinner - a new Salmon recipe from my cookbook that I've been wanting to try. Off to scrap!
I feel incredibly productive so far today... I went to our gym to work out and spent about 40 minutes on the gym listening to my MP3 player and zooming away on the Elliptical machine. Next, I headed to our Acme and picked up the newspaper (we love to look at the Ads every Sunday, lol) and some new hair products for me. Anyone ever heard of the Marc Anthony products? I picked up the Instantly Thick Products - Shampoo, Conditioner, and the Styling Spray (because it was on sale for 50% off, lol!). I also found some frozen strawberries and whipped cream to go with Peter's breakfast, which I'm currently working on now as I type this.
Everyone once in a while (ok, most weekends) I make Peter some sort of homemade breakfast - pancakes, crepes, French toast, etc... He really likes it when he has left overs that he can microwave throughout the week, so I'm in the process now of making an entire loaf of 27 slices of French toast and then zip locking them so he can eat them later. I'm such a good home maker! (yeah right, everyone who knows us knows that he's the neat freak of the two!) This week I get to make it with the most awesome farm-fresh eggs - a colleague of mine in my doctorate programs son's have chickens and she brings us fresh eggs each week! Yum Yumm!
So here's my "To-Do" list for the day. I love Gina Miller's "Note-This" paper packs.
Alright, time to do #1!
I knew it was bound to happen because of all those digi kits I've been downloading. But I've never filled up a hard drive before. Oops. So as I type this, my computer is attempting to compress infrequently used files and I'm deleting my Recycle Bin. I'm hoping between now and when I can pick up some CDs to burn the kits to, that deleting some stuff will help. Well, now I've cleaned up almost 4 Gigs. Progress, lol.
Last night we were hit with the first snow storm of 2006. We spent the day yesterday at the Philly Auto Show and checked out all of the new cars. I just found out that I'm going to be off from work tomorrow because my district is closed, yea!! I'm going to try and stop by work (who knows if my building is even open?!) to pick up a grading key and my CD burner, as well as work out at the gym. I'm so looking forward to being off!
Grr, my Photoshop Elements just crashed, and I just lost a layout that I've been working on. Grr and triple grr.
Today's another rainy weekend day. We've decided to totally bum out today and stay home. Our two cats are sacked out on the other couch, and I'm going back and forth between blogging and cooking. I'm working on whipping up a double batch of my homemade mac 'n' cheese. I'm using a new cheese, it's called Vasterbotten, and it's a Sweedish cheese that Mom picked up for Peter while we visited IKEA. I just poured it into the oven dish and placed it in the oven. The dish sure does smell good if that is any indication, and Peter seems to be looking forward to eating it. (I wonder if that's him thinking it smells good or just pure hunger? lol).
I've been reading my scrapping blogs most of the morning, and because of 
Renee Pearson's found out about this cool new software known as FotoFusion. Oh this software is cool. There's a free trial, which I've downloaded, and it allows you to make collages out of your pictures. I made this one in under 2 minutes:
Now, the green border is something I added in Photoshop. Specifically I used a canvas in FotoFusion that was set up to fit my desktop size and then I e-mailed it to myself to check it out. Until you purchase the full version, which I'm pretty sure I will do, you can export the files unless you have watermarks in them. However, I did figure out fairly quickly that you can e-mail them to yourself, copy it, and then paste it into the photo editing program of your choice. I pasted it into Photoshop Elements, and then using the color picker, chose the green color from my Mom's graduation robe to add as a border. I did this for a couple of reasons: #1. Because I didn't want to stretch the original collage out any, and #2. Because it's going to be my desktop, I've always found it to be a little difficult to see icons on top of photos. This way, I'm lining up all my icons along the green border which works out nicely. I'm going to play around with it some more today.
Only 9 more minutes until Mac 'N' Cheese! We plan on eating and then watching 6th Day. I also plan on doing some digi scrapping and shopping today. I'm working on a surprise for Peter, and need to pick up a kit for that. Youch! I burned my finger pulling the dish out of the oven. That stinks. I almost always do that. Grrr. I put in under water right away, but for some reason only warmish water was coming out so I'm not sure how much it helped or not. Ok, it should be cool by now, I'm off to dish it out!