This weekend I got on a cleaning kick. Saturday morning, I spent most of the morning in my studio, cleaning, organizing and sorting. I got rid of two huge piles that had been sitting for over a year. I kept adding to it, but never took the time to sort the papers. I got rid of two tubs of misc. stuff that were sitting under one of my workstations. Some of that stuff didn’t even go in my room. Anyway, I feel much better about working in my room. And it is nice to have some space cleared on my desk top to actually be able to make stuff. My problem is I just never put it away or make places for things. My sister has helped me with knowing how to organize stuff and I think that helps me a lot when I attempt to organize and clean out a space. But I think I don’t do it often because it seems so overwhelming to get started…after I do, I actually really enjoy it, though.
On Friday, me, Cyndi and a college friend of ours who just moved back to Jackson from Texas, went to a crop. It was nice to get away with the girls and to get some work done on my scrapbooks. Actually I only got 5 pages done in Karson’s. I am focusing on getting Karson’s book caught up, then Max, then Savannah. I only have to do Savannah’s to Kindergarten. Savannah got a scrapbook kit from her grandma for her birthday and is interested in starting to do her own album. So I am basically going to let her start at kindergarten and scrapbook on her own. I will get her started and help her out learning how to do stuff, but I want her to do her own…and she is very excited about it. I think we are going to set aside Sunday afternoons to do scrapbooking together. I talked to my sis about it, and she said Alyssa really wants to do scrapbooking too, so maybe its something we can get together and do.
This picture posted above is a sketch (actually maybe a little more than a sketch) for an idea for some ATCs I am going to do. I found this really cool ceramic piece that was done like this…only in a circle, and took the idea from that. I colored this with 9 different color sharpies and a black Gellyroll glaze pen.

For Savannah’s 7th birthday, we decided to have her first sleepover and she wanted a puppy theme. I was surprised to find stuff at Meijer that was for a puppy party. I bought some party favors, “doggy bags”, plates and napkins. I searched online for ideas for a puppy party and this is what I came up with.
1. When the girls first arrived they made dog collars. I had some dog stamps, small puppy stickers, beads, stretch string, and metal rimmed paper tags (used in scrapbooking). They were so cute. A couple of the girls even made two, one for their dog and one for themselves.
2. We made individual pizzas. Each girl put on their own toppings. I put them in the oven and sent the girls on a …
3. Scavenger Hunt. I had made picture clues of different things in the house. I had the first one, the clue they found there would lead them to the next and so on. The girls all did this together since there was just four of them. They ended up at the closet where there was a note that said please come to the Pet Adoption Center in the basement.
4. Puppy Adoption: They headed down to where Savannah and I had set up some little stuffed dogs I had purchased at Big Lots in boxes and cages (cardboard boxes and baskets). Each girl was allowed to adopt one puppy for their own. They then examined their puppy with some play vet instruments that I had found for a couple of dollars at Big Lots. They got a tiny tennis ball (3/1.00 at Family Dollar) and a tiny dog bowl filled with cookie dog food and a candy bone (I found these @ Meijer for $1.25) I made each of them an adoption certificate when they named their puppy and they had fun playing with them while I got the pizzas out of the oven and set the table.
5. We ate our pizza.
6. I told the girls while we were eating that they needed to plan a dog show. When Sam came home with the boys later, we were all going to watch them perform tricks and stuff with their puppies. They spent about a half hour practicing routines and tricks with their puppies.
7. We opened presents (Sang happy birthday in dog language – that was so funny!)
8. We made dog beds for their puppies. I picked up a fleece blanket kit at JoAnns. It comes with 2 pieces of fleece…then you cut slits on the edges and tie them together. I got 4 pillow sizes easily out of this and I have leftovers. One piece was all puppy faces and the other was black. So the girls worked on tying the pieces together (I had to help them a little) and then they stuffed them with polyfill and the insides of an old pillow I was getting rid of. They turned out so cute.
9. They did the dog show. Each girl did tricks with their puppies and then they did a routine together to a song that one of the girls had on a CD they brought along.
10. Laid out the sleeping bags, made popcorn and watched a movie: Beethoven’s 4th.
About Midnight the lights went out.

It was a great party and the girls had a blast. They were so into the puppy thing. We only had one little girl cry once- but it was her first time away from her parents. She did great…and we have the funniest story!

Ellie’s mom told me she had never stayed the night away from her family before. She was a little nervous. I told her parents that we probably would be getting done with the party stuff around 10. Her dad came around that time to pick her up, but she didn’t want to go. She decided to stick it out. We told her she could call home anytime if she wanted to. So after the dog show I went up to put the boys to bed and I guess there was a bit of a lull in the activities…and Ellie started getting upset. I was up with the boys and I was not aware of what was going on downstairs with the girls. Apparently, Ellie started to cry a little and so Sam asked her if she wanted to call home. He hit Caller ID and asked if that was her number, she said yes, so he called and had her talk to her mom. She calmed down and was fine the rest of the night. The next day her dad picked her up and we mentioned that she had cried but we had her call her mom and she was fine after that. Her dad didn’t raise any questions, and it wasn’t till we were at Savannah’s basketball practice later that morning and were talking to one of the other moms that we found out what actually happened. Grace’s mom came over to us and asked if her daughter was really ok. I told her that she had a great time. She never acted upset or wanted to call home once. Her mom looked puzzled. She said that Grace had called her all upset and crying and that she had been worrying about her all night. I said Grace never cried. Then she said that she had talked to Sam. And then it all clicked. When Sam had called Ellie’s mom, she had really called Grace’s mom instead. Neither one of them knew…of course, Ellie didn’t say much because she was weepy. I guess all she needed was a mom…and in this case it seems that any mom could do the job! We all had a huge laugh about it and I think the story got told about 5 times at church today by different people involved or who heard it from one of us! Too funny!

Today I decided to do this weeks challenge in my journal. One of these plugs belong to a really cool IKEA light that sits on the counter in my kitchen. It is glass…red inside and white frosted kind of on the outside. It gives a really cool glow to the kitchen when the lights are out. The only other light that was on while I was drawing this was the light over the sink on the other side of the room. Anyway, I got these really cool shadows, I tried to add them in after the drawing – in color with pastels, but I don’t think I captured it so well. (The rest of the color was added in photoshop). But at least I tried. The other plug is my cell phone charger.

We went back to school today even though like 8,000 people in Jackson still don’t have power. The sun was shining bright today and at lunch, as I was driving, I couldn’t help but notice the beauty of the ice on the trees. It looked like glass. And with the sunlight hitting it, it just sparkled. So buy the time I got to my other school, I had decided to take 20 minutes or so, since I had my camera with me, and capture some of the awesome effects of the ice storm in the sunlight. I was probably outside for about 25 minutes and got some really cool shots. Check them out below. What do you think? Aren’t they beautiful?

view the whole list of EDM challenges here

I’ve been putting this entry off…I think because I am afraid to commit to these goals and then not be able to achieve them. I usually come up with some sort of list of resolutions at the beginning of each year, but I am stating these as goals…something to work towards. Things I want to do to make my life better. So these are what I came up with. I actually started this page over a week ago, Sunday in church, I drew the spotlights that I could see from my seat in the balcony and then thought it kind of fit in with what I wanted to journal on that page, so they kind of work together. I added in my goals this morning…we had a snow day today. 25,000 residents of Jackson are without power still today. All the hotels for miles around are booked solid and all the generators and kerosene heaters are gone from Home Depot, Lowes, Menards…I feel very lucky that we did not lose power. We’ve been staying nice and warm at home. Monday we had a bit of an ice storm and the roads were still very slick last night when I made a late night trip to Meijers. I almost slid through a stop sign. That had my heart beating fast, I’ll tell ya! Well, yesterday was the first day I missed exercising. Cyndi has come down with strep throat and doesn’t feel well enough to join me…so I am on my own for a couple of days. I have lost my first 5 pounds, although this week I don’t seem to be making any progress! Oh well, I’ve heard that I shouldn’t be discouraged if it comes off slow. I feel so good about myself that I am being somewhat successful at this. I know it will be worth it. Well tomorrow Savannah will be 7! It doesn’t seem possible that we have had her for 7 years! We have a busy day tomorrow though with church and everything, so we won’t celebrate too much tomorrow. Friday, Savannah is having her first sleep over and has 5 little friends coming over. On Saturday night, we will have our family party for her. She has to wait to open presents from us until then. So I am going to go an buy her an outfit for her to wear tomorrow so she has something special for her birthday…that and we have to get stuff for making her cupcakes. I hope we get to go back to school tomorrow. If we have it off, I think I will take her somewhere special or something. We’ll see.

Today it finally snowed. It hasn’t snowed since early November. What’s the deal with that? My sister saw someone raking leaves the other day, IN JANUARY!? I just hope we aren’t going to still be having Winter weather when it’s supposed to be Spring.
One of my Goals for 2007 is to get healthy. Hopefully losing weight and feeling better will be a result. I joined Weight Watchers last week, and I feel like I am doing pretty good with it. My sister and I are walking everyday. Weekdays we get up to walk at 6:00am. It’s early, but it’s fun. So far we have walked 4 days in a row. It’s so much easier to have someone else to do it with. We don’t walk that far – only a little over a mile…but it’s better than not. Tonight we went grocery shopping together after the kids were in bed and it took us 2 and a half hours because we stopped and read and compared labels on everything we bought. I am excited about making healthier food choices because it will also benefit my whole family. That is definitely an added bonus. I hope to get some drawing done soon. I have done very little in my journal. It just seems like there is so much to do, it’s hard to make the time for myself, ya know?
I did do some ATCs yesterday with Savannah. We made some for a little girl who had sent off her first set of cards and never got any back…and then I made a set for the Recycled Christmas Card Swap on ATC_World. They were fun. It was fun to be creative for a while…and I had such great Christmas cards to work with too!
Here are a few of them. The Santa is from a pop up card.

Happy New year to you! Last night we were home with the kids. We usually go out and do stuff and have a babysitter, but a lot of our friends were away, and we had just gone out on Saturday night. So we let the kids camp out on the living room floor in their sleeping bags. We ordered pizza and made chocolate turtles and pretzles and watched Lion King and reruns of Hee Haw on TV until 11:55. Karson fell asleep at 10:45, but Savannah and Max stayed up till the ball dropped. Usually on New Years Eve, there is a big celebration downtown called Eve on the Ave, but we figured it pretty much got cancelled…since a big thunderstorm went through last night. But as I was taking the kids up to bed, we heard the fireworks start. It must have stopped raining in just enough time to still do them. So we ran to the one window you can see them from and watched a two minute firework show before tucking the kids into their beds. Funny thing: Karson was sleeping when I put him in his bed…but woke up screaming at around 3:00 running around mad because he was in his bed…all he wanted was his sleeping bag. So I had to run down and get it from downstairs and I tried to just put it in bed with him, but that wasn’t good enough. I had to set up his sleeping bag and pillow, his Nacho Libre friend, his Sponge Bob Spatula and his sippy cup on the floor, just like it was downstairs. Then he was good to go and went right back to sleep. Talk about obsesive! I don’t know where he gets that from. Tonight Savannah went to her cousin’s to spend the night, so I let the boys sleep on the floor together in their sleeping bags. They were very excited about that. I should probably go check and make sure they are actually sleeping. Anyway, tonight, Sam and I are loading up on caffeine and cleaning up our store room in the basement, which will consist of throwing a lot of stuff out (tomorrow is garbage day – thank God!) and organizing and labeling all the bins in that room. We’ll see how far we get, since it’s already 11 and we haven’t even started!

Oh and I forgot to mention going out on Saturday. We went to see Bob Seger at the Palace in Auburn Hills. It was a great concert. I knew all except like two or three songs. We went with some friends of ours and had a blast. For dinner, we tried a new Italian place where they serve everything family style and then we zoomed over to Cold Stone Creamery for the second best Ice Cream I have ever had in my life! It was awesome. Here is a clip from the concert. “Old Time Rock and Roll”.