Sweet & Simple April Part 1

April 1 was family night with Easter egg hunt and pizza. April 2 the Okland grand kids spent the night and we visited GG in the care center and then went to her house to play with the kitties. On April 3 Roger and I hit the road to visit some Iowa wineries, including White Oak, Snus Hill, and Santa Maria.
April 4 was Easter Sunday. After dinner some people crashed on the sofa after dinner. April 5 the daffodils are in full bloom. I need to clean out my flower beds. April 6 I visited Gray’s Lake on my lunch as it was a beautiful day. April 7 visited Mom after the Neighborhood Revitalization Board approved Ft. Des Moines’ application. She is looking great.

March 8 spent the evening at my childhood home freshening up for my mother’s home visit. March 9 enjoying my flower bed. March 10 was a busy day. I washed quilts at the laundromat, took 3 dogs to the veterinarian (alone) for shots and heartworm testing, and made Mom’s bed with the help of Penny. March 11 went to Gray’s Lake to walk and caught this beautiful sunrise
April 12 the City Council officially recognized the FortDes Moines Neighborhood Association. On the 13th I made myself one of my “smoothers” for breakfast. Went to Sacred Heart Church on the 14th to see the girls sing.

April 15 I visited Leiserwitz to check out Tamron 18-270 lens I am coveting.
April 16 my mother returned home to live after residing in the hospital or care facility since February 22.
April 17 I drove through Water Works Park to enjoy the flowering trees.
April 18 we visited the zoo with Jeremy, Sarah, and the kids.
April 19 I enjoyed watching the birds at my feeder.
April 20 enjoying my tulips with my new Tamron 18-270mm lens.
April 21 was a visit to Home Depot to exchange a lawn mower we had recently purchased.

Sweet & Simple, March 2010, Part 2

Finished my March Sweet & Simple pages tonight. Mom is still in the Care Center but we've seen improvements in her awareness since being taken to the hospital on the 30th. After nebulizer treatments, and med changes she was sent back to the Care Center. Am hoping she can come home next week perhaps.

Life 365 Upate

Finished up January without missing a day. All supplies are from Life 365 Sweet and Simple, available at Weeds and Wildflower Designs.

Life 365 Update

The latter half of the third week of 2010 turned out to be quite icy, but beautiful.

Life 356

So far I've stayed on task with my picture a day. Here is the left half of the 3rd week of 2010.

Supplies: Gina Marie Huff, Sweet and Simple Life 365 (January) System available at Weeds and Wildflowers Design

Life 365 Update

Two weeks into 2010 and I've managed to take a picture every day. They may not be good or interesting pictures, but they are pictures nonetheless.

Picture of the Day

Last year I participated in Project 365 and while I completed the year, I didn't post all of them. After debating whether to do it again this year, I decided to continue. Here is my cover page for January and the first three days of the year. I think this week will be food and beverage-relaterd photos.

The photo on January's cover page is from last week when I was babysitting some grandkids. Cailey and Mia were pretending to be asleep when I came back down from putting Luke to bed.

January 1: I've already posted this photo of the empty juice containers after the kids left.

January 2: Roger and I went to Bordenaro's, usually one of our favorite pizza joints, for pizza. Service was the worst we've ever had. We sat there for 10-15 minutes before a waitress even came over to see if we had been served. I might add they weren't that busy. We gave her our drink and food order and she then left and cleaned off a table, went back behind the counter and picked up her wine glass and took some sips and joked and visited with other workers and friends. She hadn't even placed our order. After waiting 10 minutes I marched up to the counter and asked if we cold get our drinks "tonight." "Oh, yes, sure. I'm sorry." I walked back to the table and she disappeared into the kitchen to place our orders. The rest of the night went okay and I don't think I had anything in my pizza or drink that shouldn't be. I'm not sure, but I don't think she should have been drinking while at work. On top of that, I seriously doubt she was 21. The pizza though was worth the wait. Love their pizza and onion rings.

January 3: Needed groceries plus I had made some purchases from one of my favorite digi shops, Weeds and Wildflowers Designs. Unfortunately for reasons that remain a great mystery, I am unable to download my purchases from this store (and a couple other ones) from at home so I have to find a public wi-fi spot to download. So we headed off to Hy-Vee for breakfast and shopping. I just had OJ and toast; Roger had their breakfast buffet. Came home and fixed the Pioneer Woman's pot roast and while it cooked, got some digi scrapping and organizing files done. Great Day!

Supplies used: All from Gina Marie Huff's Sweet and Simple LIFE 365 January Template and Kit Bundle available at Weeds and Wildflowers Design.

I didn't do any scrapping last week. Been catching up on my 365 layout and doing some challenges at Scrapable.net.

This lay-out (lei-out) was done for "X Marks the Spot" challenge (lei-out that has the word SWEET in honor of April) and "Snorkeling Lessons" (combining two or more papers). The car I photographed at Hardee's during one of their Friday night car shows.



These were my photos for the 13th week of 2009. Thursday is an out-of-focus finch I photographed at our bird feeder. Friday I visited Jason's grave on what would have been his 31st birthday. It would have also been my Brother's 62nd birthday. My paternal grandmother also was born on the 27th of March. Saturday night Roger and I spent another night in playing Wii games. Sunday I caught some snow still hanging around in my bird bath. Monday night Jeremy and Jaren stopped by for a visit. He had the tongue sticking out thing going on. Tuesday I spent my lunch in my car reading in McRae Park and photographing these geese. Wednesday Roger and I took the girls to their soccer practice.

Project 365

Just because I haven't been posting my weekly lay outs for my project 365 doesn't mean I haven't been doing them. I could make up some kind of excuse about my computer crashing or something or other, but the fact is I have just plumb forgot to post them. It appears the last time I posted my project 365 was week 6, so to bring you up to date:

Week 7:


Week 8:


Week 9:


Week 10:


Week 11:


Week 12:

Project 365 Week 6

Here are my week 6 pictures. Thursday I visited Water Works park on my lunch; Friday took a day of vacation to spend with Luke; my beagle Maddie; my front door; Gray's Lake on a winter day with hints of Spring; and Jaren sitting up all by himself.

Week 4 of my 365 project

I slipped up this week and didn't take any pictures on Monday or Tuesday. But since I took over 100 pictures on Sunday at the twins' birthday party, and because two girls celebrated a birthday, I chose to post pictures taken on Sunday in the Monday and Tuesday slot. Doesn't Luke look so sweet? A few seconds before this picture was taken was when he quit snoring, opened his eyes, and informed the room he wanted to go to the zoo.

Week 3 in review, part 2

Continuing on in my quest to document 2009 with a picture a day, here is the 2nd half of week 3.

Sunday we went shopping and one of the items we bought was a new comforter for our bed.

Monday was a holiday and I didn't have to work. I spent the morning in my office scrapping this layout for the ADSR 4 race. This is what I saw on my love seat when I left the office to get something to eat.

Tuesday was the inauguration and I spent the day glued to the TV and forgot to take a picture until later that evening, which I was still glued to the TV. So I snapped this picture of the new Prez and his beautiful wife at one of the balls.

Wednesday it had warmed up to 30 degrees (its in the picture) and on my lunch washed my car and then took it in for an estimate to fix the damage from this.

I am using Life 365 Tool Box Collection, available from
Weeds and Wildflowers for this project.

Week 3, part 1

Images from the first half of week three of 2009.

Been shopping this weekend for birthday presents for the granddaughters. Hard to believe they will be seven. Bought each one a toy and then bought some clothes I think are really cute--let's hope they like them. I also did some shopping at Christopher Banks for myself--found three tops off their $9.99 rack. Besides clothes, we bought a new quilt and shams for our bed. The dogs aren't happy that I wouldn't let them up on it tonight.

Note about the pictures: I have been shooting everything in RAW. For these pictures I changed my camera settings back to JPEG. I am not happy with them after working with RAW photos.

2nd week of 2009 in Review

In my attempt to take a photo a day during 2009 and scrap it, here is week 2.

I used Life 365 Tool Box Collection from Weeds and Wildflowers.

I finished my third and fourth layouts for the Amazing Digi Scrapping Race 4. You can check out my LO's here. Challenge 4 was a very emotional one for me to do. We had to do layout with art and soul, the soul being I had to journal something from my soul, which I've never done and I'm not really comfortable doing. When faced with the challenge, I immediately knew what my subject matter would be, the loss of Jason and the ever present regrets of not holding him long enough and never getting a picture of him.