A little photo housecleaning

I've been trying to find some time to go through all the pictures on my computer. Some are ready to be permanently moved to disc, and some are still works in progress so they will stick around.

I came across these little gems in my housecleaning this weekend. This is from a photo shoot I did in February. Don't you just want to hug them?

4th of July

What a busy weekend! It started with my very first ever 5K walk Friday morning. That was fun! So much fun I'm thinking of doing another one in a few weeks. Rushed home, to get ready to go visit my brother.

Got to his house about 2:30 and he had a whole spread of food he was going to cook for us that night. But first we had a little battle to settle on the Wii. Four hours later we were cooking dinner. ::snort::

After our delicious steak dinner we went to see the fireworks in Fairhope. That was so much fun! I took some shots, but I'm not thrilled with them. Oh well.

Saturday, Destin and I got up early and walked 5 miles, then came home and had breakfast, and another battle on the Wii. Then we took him shopping for his birthday presents, and for his birthday lunch. YUM! After (another) battle on the Wii, and a hailstorm that knocked the power out, we got on the road and headed home.

Sunday, I got up and walked 6 miles, then went to church and to sweet Kailey's swim meet. She qualified for the State Meet in 4 categories!!! After all of the excitement of the weekend I was pooped and went to bed at 8:15, lol.....which explains why I'm a day late posting my weekend pictures!

Here are some of the fireworks shots:

When your "to-do" list is a mile long...

...the best thing to do is scrapbook! ha! After Jeanne posted her BEACH album she whipped up the other day, I remembered I had a TRAVEL chipboard album I bought right after I returned from Italy. Jeanne's masterpiece inspired me to do my own album. Hey, it was on my to-do list, just not anywhere near the top! ha!

I took a few pictures from the trip to Italy, and some funky, colorful papers and ran with it. Here's the result:

Jeanne made me do it

She got me hooked on digi stuff, and then when I saw all ofher beautiful creations, I just had to learn for myself! So I signed up for Jessica Sprague's "Now We're Rockin with Photoshop" class. I was a little late getting started on week one, but early this morning I finished my very own first layout!! (well with Jeanne's help, ha!)

My little Mother's Day project

For Mother's Day I decided to make my mom an ATC Card Holder with pictures from our trip to Ireland in March. So for the last couple of weeks I've been printing tiny pictures, cutting out tiny pictures and decorating tiny ATC cards with Ireland memorabilia and of course, tiny pictures. ha.

I thought this would be a great way to get a lot of pictures together, so she could keep it on her desk at work and be able to stroll down memory lane whenever she wanted. I knew if I made a scrapbook of our trip it would turn into 3 huge scrapbooks because I took over a thousand photos, and she wouldn't look at them as often as she would the ATC holder. It was a lot of fun to work on, I just wish I had started earlier so I could have really done it up right.

So without further ado, here's one of my Mom's mother's day presents:








I will add more photos tonight. I'm off to work! Have a great day!

I've been flocked

So the other day I was driving home and as I turned onto my street (also known as Freak Street), something caught my eye. My heart skipped a beat and I immediately began repeating to myself, "Please don't let that be my house, please don't let that be my house..."

As I pulled up the mantra changed to one single exclamation:

"Oh snap! It's my house." LOL

There in my front yard, right smack in the middle of Freak Street were about 2 dozen pink flamingos! Ay Yi Yi! I was flocked.

My across the street neighbor, Jay, was standing in his driveway marvelling at the impact of such "fuschia-ness" I'm sure. He was immobile. Mesmerized by the beauty. Then he was suddenly capable of speech again.

"Quite a surprise to come home to!" He said, hopefully.

"Oh this? It's no surprise, it's my new yard art! I thought I needed some color in my yard, and who has time to plant flowers!" I responded cheerfully, proud of myself for recovering so quickly from the shock.

"Just make sure it STAYS IN YOUR YARD!" he retorted, with a smirk. Crap, he was onto me. I guess the color hadn't fully returned to my face after all.

And to the benevolent bestowers of this gift? All I have to say is, "sleep with one eye open "O" Family. One eye open........."

Dorks with Pets

So Chelsea Grace LOVES the outdoors, but being the mean pet owner that I am, I don't usually let her outside. She's strictly an indoor cat. I do allow her in the screen room occasionally to watch the birds in the backyard; and the one rare snowstorm we had offered her the opportunity to take a few steps in the snow before I whisked her back into the warmth of the house. And she's ok with that...most of the time.

Every once in awhile she will catch a glimpse of freedom and bolt out the front door if I happen to have my hands full. Luckily she never gets too far before I catch her. I have always felt a little guilty for not letting her outside, but not guilty enough.

Here's where the dork part comes in. Chelsea Grace got a stroller for Christmas so that she can go outside. ha! I figure we can both be happy with this arrangement. She gets to be outside, and I get to know she's safe. Win win, right? I decided to ease her into the transition. First the stroller sat in the living room. She happily jumped up into it several times a day to nap or watch tv. Then I would zip her up in it and walk her up and down the hall. She wasn't terribly crazy about that, but who can blame her. My hallway is pretty boring.

Finally, last week, it was showtime! The moment we had all been waiting for. I got off work a little early, so it was still daylight; and the weather was nice; almost springlike. I came in, grabbed Chelsea Grace and plopped her in the stroller. Zip zip and she was safely in! Took her outside and we walked up and down the street. She meowed the whole way, I think she was scared to death. ha! I finally convinced her we weren't going to the V-E-T's office and let her just sit in the stroller in the front yard and watch all the comings and goings.

Guess what? She LIKES it! We've gone for a couple more walks and now she just sits and watches everything as we stroll along, like it's the most natural thing in the world. The neighbors, on the other hand, think I'm a tad odd. ha. Little do they know. I'm a LOT odd! But I live on freak street anyway, so who are they to judge?