Happy April Fool's Day

Just a quick update this morning. Our weekend was extremely busy and I haven't had any time in my craftroom. Hopefully I will get in there before the day is over and finish up another week in my Project Life album. I totally missed last week and now I'm feeling way behind.

I hope you all had a great Easter. We had a house and yard full of family. The little kids colored eggs and then had fun hunting them. They played with bubbles and ran around the yard all day, even when we got sprinkles of rain.

Khloë didn't realize at first that she was supposed to run and find the eggs, but she caught on real quick when she saw the other kids running after them. She had a lot of fun and wanted to do it again.

Update on the puppy. We still have her! Nobody called to claim her and I was worried about her not being vaccinated, so I took her on Thursday to get her puppy shots and check-up. She has gained a pound in one week! She was a little nervous about being at the vet because it's still new to her, but she was more excited to get lots of attention. We are tossing names around, but it's hard to pick one that everyone in the family agrees with. The one we're mostly using right now is Coco. Short for CocoPuff because she's so furry and soft. Her fur is like a baby lamb or something. We also discovered that she LOVES the water. I had to lock her up while I was watering my plants because she kept trying to get the water at the cost of my newly planted flowers.

Swingsets, cabinets and a puppy, oh my!

Boy, was it a busy weekend. I am sore from head to toe.  It was a non-stop working weekend thats for sure. As soon as I got off work on Friday I drove to my son and daughter-in-law's for the weekend. My son was at gone for a bachelor party for the weekend so us girls decided to do some yard work and put Khloë's swing set together.  We started by rototilling the ground so that we could level it.

We bought some black weed barrier material and 35 bags of rubber bark. After rototilling we leveled the ground as much as we could and then put down the weed barrier. This is Khloë hammering in the stakes to hold the barrier down.

Some of the 35 bags of rubber bark.

And this is what it's all about.

After the swing set was done and some other random yard work, I made the trip to Ikea. I thought I knew exactly what I wanted and that I would be in and out in a snap. Well, it didn't work quite that way. Once I saw the white Expedit bookshelves I realized they weren't white white. I was liking the dark brown/black ones better.

I stayed with my original plan though and got two of the white units. Made it home and as I was pulling into the drive way I saw a puppy running in the middle of the street about 8 houses away. I ran down the street and scooped this scared puppy up that by this time was hiding under a car. I took it home after asking a couple of the neighbors if it was theirs.

I will put some flyers out, contact the newspaper, the animal shelters and the veterinarians in the area to see if anyone is looking for her.

I also got two of my cabinets put together for the upstairs bonus room, but not the two bookshelves. After running around today looking for puppy owners I will get back to the bookshelves. So, that was my weekend in a nutshell.

Scrapbook Expo Goodies

I may have gotten a little carried away with my shopping last week. Before I got to the Expo I told myself, "I don't really NEED anything". I did want to look at some Simple Stories papers if they had any for Project Life, but that was about it......

As you can see there are NO Simple Stories papers, but there IS a LOT of other stuff. I think the first booth I went to had these cute Mickey Mouse bags that were free if you spend $25, so what did I do? Of course I spent $25! The bag is barely visible on the left side of the picture. And "no" I didn't NEED the bag either. LOL.

You can't tell in the picture, but the tulle has little sparklies on it. It's really pretty and if I get brave enough I might try to make Khloë a tutu for her Gymnastics class.

I got 6 of these 6x6 paper pads to use in my Project Life along with lots of embellishments to go with them.

I also got adhesive because you know I'll be needing that.

And of course some stamps that I can use in Project Life or for cards. I love the people stamps. You can't see it in the picture, but there's a dog that goes with them too. Very cute.

And just so you know it's not all fun and games, here's a picture of me working. Painting the bonus room in preparation  for new cabinets.

More Room for Craft Stuff

So this is how my evening went after work. I got home, started to vacuum and husband comes in

the house to ask me if I called a tow truck. To make a long story short, yes I did. My wonderful dear son that I love to death never checked the oil in his car and found out too late that it was completely out. The engine seized up and then wouldn't start at all. Too late for oil at this point. After months of trying to get husband and wonderful dear son to take care of getting rid of the car I took matters into my own hands and had it towed away. Unfortunately when I asked if the tow company could come the same day, I was told "no". Well, ten minutes after getting home my husband comes in the house and says there's a tow truck outside. Ugh! We had to scramble to find the keys and push the car out of the garage so that it could be loaded onto the tow truck.

 

 

 

Then the car wouldn't fit with the other cars already loaded. It was a big mess. My husband and I both ended up helping the tow truck driver get everything manuevered just right. I can now say that I have used the controls on a tow truck to lower and lift the truck bed. (that was kinda fun)

 

So all of this trouble means that I have an empty garage (at the moment) and I can hopefully find room for storing some of the things that are upstairs in our bonus room. If I can get the bonus room cleaned out I would love to paint and build a nice scrapbook room that will be big enough for friends and family to come over and scapbook with me. That's the plan. Hopefully I can make it happen.

 

 

Update on Blogger Storage

I have an update on my storage issue. Thanks to a lot of help from the girls on the Cricut Message Board I was able to make a little more room in my storage so that I can upload photos again. It's a long tedious process, but it's coming along. I guess I've been adding pictures completely wrong for the past two years and now I have to spend countless hours fixing it.

Instead of adding pictures to Picasa first (which will automatically resize them correctly) and then adding them to my blog, I've been adding pictures straight from my computer at original size. This, I have learned, is way too big and takes up way too much space. Anything under 800x800 pixels will not count towards used space on Picasa, so the trick is to make sure all pictures are under that size. When I looked at my pictures I found that most of them are downloaded at 1600x1200 pixels.

What I've been doing to fix my past mistake is to delete the oversized pictures and re-save them in Picasa from my computer. Picasa changes the size to something under 800 pixels and then I can go back and add the pictures back to my blog. Warning! This is a very long process. I worked on it for a couple of hours last night and another couple of hours this morning. All of that work and I only freed up 2% of space. It's enough to start doing things correctly though. I can now add pictures again, so I am happy. I will go in periodically and clean up more of the pictures when I find the time.

If you're having the same problem I hope I've given enough information to get you started in the process of cleaning up your pictures as well. Please feel free to leave me any comments or questions you might have and I'll try my best to answer. I'm still learning this so I don't know if there is an easier way, but for now this is working for me.

Cindy

Yikes! I'm out of storage.

I've been trying to add new posts, but Blogger won't let me add anymore photos. It says that I'm out of storage space. I guess tonights homework will be to figure this problem out. Until then....

Happy Friday Everyone!

I was feeling guilty for not adding anything to my blog in awhile. I've been doing some crafty things, but nothing is completed yet. I'm still working on the House Warming invitations and a paper bag mini. The paper bag mini is coming along and hopefully I'll have enough done today that I can post a couple of pictures of my progress later.
For now I wanted to wish everyone a happy Friday and a wonderful weekend. I'll be back soon with something crafty.

New Glasses!

Good morning. I didn't have time to make my post last night, so I thought I'd give you a little explanation as to why. (I actually have an excuse this time!) I had to go into town to pick up my new glasses. I only need them to read and it's a little hard to get used to them. I'm fine when I'm at the computer, but when I glance away to talk to someone or do something else, everything is blurry. I definitely can't wear them to walk around in. I would be running into things.

I was told by the eye doctor that my left eye is a little far-sighted. The right eye is very slight, but because the left eye is bad they are both working harder to work together. By the end of the day my eyes feel very tired. I'm hoping the glasses will help (if I can get used to them).

So here is a picture of me and my new glasses. What do you think?

Now that I have the new glasses I'm wondering if I should cut my hair shorter? Maybe add a little more blonde to it? Oh, I think I need new clothes too....

Have a great day. Cindy