Good byes & Thinking of you & Congrats

With some free time on my hands, I was able to spend time making some cards for people in our lives.

First is a little card that I made to go with a little gift that I'm giving to a co-worker who just announced that she's pregnant. It's about 3"x3" and I used 4 different papers to decorate it. I tried to make it gender neutral since she's just in her 2nd trimester.

Second, is another card for a friend who's just found out she's pregnant, too. I actually made two of this card except that the other one said happy birthday on it with an l for my friend Lori.

I used 3 papers and some brown wood grain ribbon. The letter has glitter on it and then is glued to a brown circle with a cream circle on it. I used a 3-d sticker to attach it all to the card. This is a regular sized card (about 4"x6").

This last card is a good bye card for the youth pastor at our church. He is getting married in May and wants to be closer to where his fiance is going to school in Memphis. So, this is sort of a wedding gift as well as a good bye. I used some cross paper and a couple other plain pieces of cardstock. I made a cross out of cardboard and colored it with a marker.

I think it was a profitable day... and I still have more things that I made to show you tomorrow!

The bathroom sink

For some unknown reason, our cat Oreo had started jumping in the bathroom sink several months ago. For cats not liking water, she would sit up there and lick and lick at the faucet and whatever water would sit in the sink. Often she would cry so that someone would come and turn on the faucet for her.

Well, we were having issues with the faucet leaking which made it easier for Oreo, but worse on our pocketbook. My sister & brother-in-law came last weekend for a visit and since my brother-in-law knows handy stuff, he and Barry replaced the hoses. It didn't make any difference, but prompted us to get a hold of our landlord. She sent out a plumber and the faucet had a couple pieces replaced.

That brings us back to this picture. Poor Oreo now doesn't have a steady water flow and it just makes her sad. She sits up in the sink just waiting for water!

Brownies!

Yummmmm! I was domestic last night and decided to make my grandma's recipe for brownies. I also needed to make a dessert for Barry's office on Friday, so this was a good excuse.

The recipe is pretty simple and basic. I'll go back tonight and make frosting for the pan of brownies. These brownie bites will be good just on their own.

My nephew

Over the weekend we had the opportunity to host my sister and her family at our house. Their little one is just growing up sooo big! He's 17 months old and getting into everything. He is usually in such a good mood, singing and talking away. Look at how cute he is:

The above picture was actually from the end of January when we went to his house.

He's so hard to get a picture of because he rarely stays still for a moment! Isn't he a cutey?!

Book Report

My boss had asked me to read this book and do a book report on it. I'm excited to use my creative juices to create a 1 page summary, a 5 minute oral presentation, and an item to help "sell" the book.

The story line follows a family as they immigrate from the Ukraine in the early 1900s to find religious freedom in America. It continues on through three generations to see how God is personal and meets you right where you need it. The title comes from a passage in Isaiah 60 and offered hope to a father that despite the wrong choices that his sons were making, God was going to bring them back to him.

The reason I'm reading this book is because of the difference that a Bible placed by The Gideons picked up out of a hotel room in Las Vegas made in the lives of this family. It was an easy read and offers hope to its readers that God has a plan and a hope for the future of even the hardest of cases.

A new day

A new chapter of my life is occurring. I'm trying to make some better choices for myself and my family. I made a decision to run a 5K and paid my registration the end of December. I continued to run and prepare myself for the run that was on February 12. I tried to recruit some friends to run with, but it just didn't come together.

Since the race was downtown Nashville, we invited my sister and brother-in-law to come for the weekend as they've been wanting to hang out and see it all. They came in Friday night and we got prepared for the day ahead. The race was at 10am so that gave us time to get up and go find parking before getting the race packet.

Here I am before the race. My sister had made the headband for me. It was a brisk 30 something degrees when we first got there, but as the morning went on, it was in the 40s. I had several layers on and was glad for them in the shady areas. In the sunny parts, I was uncomfortable. The first mile marker, a man was calling out the time, and I got disheartened because it was already over 12 minutes. But, then I realized that he was doing gun time and I was a good bit behind that.

So, the last bit of the race was uphill -- right when you think you're never going to make it! But, you could see the clock. I could see that it said 35 minutes and I thought that I had a chance to improve my time. I picked up the pace and sure enough made it across at just over 36 minutes. But, when we looked at the times posted, I did way better than that. My chip time was 34 minutes 40 seconds!!! That's almost 2 minutes better from my last time.

So, here's the beginning of a new day. I'm going to make a change for the better.

Back again!

I didn't realize that I missed the whole month of December to post what's going on in our lives. Maybe that's a clue? TOO BUSY!!! Barry worked so much overtime and I was holding down the home front especially on the weekends with running errands, cleaning, etc.

A New Year has started and we're being challenged to make resolutions and live a life with no regrets. I have a few things that I'm thinking about as resolutions and hope to put into print in the next couple weeks.

To start out the year, here are a few cards that I made with some wintery stickers that I got from my mom (in other words, were setting on top of everything on my desk!). I have a couple ladies in mind to send these to and will get them in the mail in the next couple days.