2013 Week 3

Nicholas started getting interested in Lego’s after receiving some for his birthday. I had my hair cut with bangs, the first big change in a while. I was shocked how dead the gym was for January. Mike made some changes to his radio station hosting.

2013 Week 4

We had math and science night at Nicholas’s school this week. I did my first Color Run in the pouring rain. We had a great time, but we were soaked to the core. We had a family movie night watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (first time for the kiddos). Nicholas loved the movie, except he did not like the part where Charlie and his grandpa are in danger until they figure out burping will save them. We almost had to stop the movie at that point until he was sure they were going to be okay.

2012 Week 3

Last year week 3 included Nicholas’s birthday party, a rare date night for Mike and me and us trying a new church. Jackson was star of the week at school and Nicholas helped us make his poster.

2012 Week 4

By the end of January we were getting ready to start on some home improvement projects and started by shopping for a new couch. We had Friday date night with take out at home.

Hoping to catch up with more weeks and share some layouts over the next couple of weeks. I also have a major change to share in my scrap room. I have been busy this year, so I guess that explains my continued lack of blogging.

Have a great Wednesday!

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When I saw the registration come up for one here in Arizona I asked my friend Christina if she would do it with me, knowing I could probably talk easily talk her into something that would involve running. Then we got Karen to join us and then Christina challenged everyone else in the office to join us, that’s how we became  “The Jelly Bean Counters” (we’re accountants, get it?)

Last night I made sure to have all my stuff ready to go for heading out early this morning.

My Color Run T-Shirt ended up being way too big, I ordered it before I lost another 20 pounds. So it will make a good painting shirt. I was up early to get ready making sure not to forget my tatooo!

All week long the forecast had predicted rain, making the outfit choice in question. I settled on layers of white. And at the last minute added a white trash bag to my bag.  Not that it would matter I would be soaked long before the race even started.

Our start time was at 7:30 and we planned to meet by 6:50. By the time I found everyone the only dry part of me was that covered by the trash bag. The rest soaked.

Of the 9 of us that signed up, 7 of us braved the rain (because, that had not let up at all).

There are color chutes every kilometer and after the first one I would rather get colorful than worry about keeping anything dry and I ditched the trash bags.

While I am certain the color is messy on a dry day, the rain made it that much more fun.

Christina got us to run and jump in the huge puddles.

Trisha got a whole lot of blue dumped on her.

In the end we were completely soaked and happily colorful.

And we thought Trisha looked like the blueberry girl in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (which coincidently is the planned movie tonight for Family Movie Night)

Trisha and me after I ended up with red smeared on my face – which doesn’t look like much in this picture.

Every layer I had on was soaked and the color bled through each layer, including my socks and some of my skin is still blue after a shower.

Would I do it again?

You bet – rain or shine. But I am putting in my order for shine next year!

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In 2012 I finished my first full year of doing a Project Life album. I will admit that the last several months were finally documented mostly in December. But it was an accomplishment nonetheless. It made me excited to tackle 2013 a little more timely. I helped that desire along by subscribing to Studio Calico’s Project Life monthly kit.

My week’s for the 2013 album will go Monday to Saturday with the plan to document the previous week the following weekend. I don’t worry about having a picture a day, I am trying to capture our week.  I may skip weeks or combine them, whatever works. This is not a high maintenance project for me.  So far, I am still on track.  I am planning to keep it simple by using only the supplies I throw in my Project Life basket throughout the month and the Studio Calico kits.

This album is totally worth doing. Yesterday it was awesome when I was working on the week 2 pages and Nicholas and Jackson came over and sat with me to look at the pictures and talk about the week.

That is what is really about…documenting our everyday life.

This year I thought it would be fun to share the Project Life pages I do each week or two and also show the pages for the same period in 2012. (Whether or not it is fun for you, I know it will be for me. )

2013 Project Life

Here is my 2013 opening page…I thought of a 1000 ways to improve it after I finished, but then I called it good and scrapped a layout instead.  (The photos were taken by the sweet and talented Becca Pikula)

I loved the cards that were included in the Studio Calico kit, it made the cover page come together really fast and focus on the family photos.

Week 1 -  I used a combination of the Studio Calico Project Life and regular kits and some various printables I already had. I prefer to use the Design A page protectors, but hope to mix it up this year somewhat – I have all the other sizes, so I just need to think about it when I select and print my pictures for the week.

Week 1

s

After I select and edit my pictures in Lightroom, I use Picasa to do quick collages. I don’t even bother with Lightroom or Photoshop for the collages. For me, it is a lot faster in Picasa.  I use this especially for the 3×4 pictures I pick 2 vertical photos and pull them into a 4×6 grid collage; save and ready to upload for printing.

Week 1 (Left)

I like to include a lot of pictures from the week and collages allow me to do it.  I don’t need one photo and one journaling card a day.  I combine jpurnaling for a couple of days on a 4×6 sometimes. It’s all good.

Week 1 (Right)

Week 2

It was Nicholas’s birthday this week and we had extra pictures so I added an American Crafts 6×12 3-up page in between the normal Design A pages. I love the 6×12 for squeezing in a few extra pictures in a week. I really only want one album for the year so this helps me accomplish that.

Week 2 (Left)

Week 2 (Right)

and here is what we were doing last year at the same time…

2012 Project Life

2012 Cover

Last year’s opening page included pictures from our photo shoot with Sarah Heinle who did a fabulous job with the kiddos even with an incredibly uncooperative little Jackson.

Week 1

Last year I used the Clementine core kit by Becky Higgins with a little supplementing from my stash.  I had also picked up the coordinating digital life kit from Jessica Sprague which is now available at AC Digitals. Early in 2012 I did a lot more hybrid cards and photos with Project Life. But as time got away from me I did less of it.

Week 1 (Left)

The polaroid and white bordered frame collages were done in Picasa. I did pull it into Photoshop Elements to add the digital paper background, but you could cut the photos out and adhere them to normal paper too.

Week 1 (Right)

Week 2

Another time I used the American Crafts 6×12 page protector. We had Grandma and Grandpa visiting that weekend and Nicholas’s birthday so we had extra pictures I wanted to include.

Week 2 (Left)

Another thing I noticed I did more early in 2012 was include more of the day stickers for each photo. That ended too when I had enough to worry about just getting the weeks together, let alone trying to remember which day was which.  Again – following the KISS method  (keep it simple silly) .

Week 2 (Right)

I liked using the digital cards to type my journaling on using a typewrite font, maybe if I keep up more this year that will work out, and then again maybe it won’t. Who knows? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Thanks for stopping by.

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We have lived in 2 states

Built 2 homes

Adopted 2 puppies

And had 2 amazing boys

And we did it all together

Happy Anniversary Mike! Thank you for making my life perfect! I love you!

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But we live in a school district that has a modified school round schedule, so we get to enjoy longer spring, fall and winter breaks. When I really think about it the worst part of the summer starts around mid-July, when the monsoon and dust storms pick up and we get hot days and humid disgusting weather. So really the kids don’t want to do anything outside any more than we do. Today was no exception on the weather front. Just plain yucky. But I digress.

Jackson’s pre-school class was moved to a different school, so now Mike has to go across town to drop off Jackson first and then race back to drop Nicholas off before school starts. I took today off to join him.

We started off with a mini photo shoot, with the best that I get in cooperation with pictures. He’s cute anyway!

Showing off his new Super Mario backpack that he picked out…

This was the best we were getting this morning of a shot with both boys in it. But what was cute was Jackson hugging Nicholas and saing “ohhh”. So cute.

Waiting for daddy to pull the car out of the garage.

Jackson wasn’t having the photo shoot with his backpack out front, so we improvised.

Heading off to class at the new school We found out he does not like the new backpack so we may need to revert to the old smaller one for the time being.

In the classroom now and we are happy. Jackson has the same teacher at the new school and she has the class set up almost exactly like the old classroom at the old school, so he was right at home. Good thing we went to meet the teacher night last week. They were running late and we had to get going to get Nicholas to school on time.

By the time we made it to Nicholas’s school it was a madhouse.  We had to park across the street more than a block away and walk him to the play yard. We packed lunch on the first day and were so happy the school allows kids to bring peanut butter in their lunch, since that is all Nicholas will eat. Lunch is really the one thing we worried about most.

All set and we are on our way to school.

We hurried up to wait in the kindergarten playground. It was a bit overwhelming with all the parents in line with the kids. Nicholas was super excited to be there and get his day started. These are some of my favorite pictures of the day!

Finally in the classroom and settled at his desk we said our goodbyes.

We are so proud of how far this little guy has come and we know he is going to have a great time in kindergarten.

We picked Nicholas up after school and it was a little crazy. The kids all come piling out of the school at the same time. We were a little nervous because Nicholas is used to Mike signing him out when he was picked up at pre-school. So we did not want him to be scared if he couldn’t find us. It seemed like forever before we saw him. He was following a teacher out and I got this picture of him, before I got his attention. Our little boy just seems so big to me here.

Nicholas’s teacher is awesome. She called the house tonight to see how he was doing after school and said he had a great day. We believe it. He was in such a great mood when he got home and I was so thankful I took the day off of work so I could share this big day with him.

I realized as I was holding his hand walking into school and leaving this afternoon, that it probably won’t be that far away when he won’t want to hold my hand anymore when we are at school around his friends. That is the only thing that I teared up about today. I was so happy for him and proud of him that I could not stop smiling.

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I love this song…I think it is going to be big this year

….I digress

I guess since I was last here we did a few things. We took the boys to Schnepf Farms to pick peaches, Jackson really got into it this year. He was much more cooperative than his big bro!

I spent my Mother’s Day with my 2 best boys. we were working on our backyard so it wasn’t really relaxing.

I

But the results made me happy, even if I had to spend a lot of time at my 2 favorite big box  hardware stores.

We were able to get in the pool by the middle of the month. With the life vest, Jackson now acts like he owns the pool and is giving Nicholas a run for his money. I will be surprised if they aren’t swimming without them by the end of the summer.

We spent Memorial Day Weekend with Mike’s brother’s family. In between pool time there was lots of Apple friendly fun.

Nicholas had a couple of friends birthday party’s over the weekend so we had fun with the 5 year old friends at gymnastics and Peter Piper.

Jackson took over my iPad. The only way to get him to eat was to let him have it at the table. He looked like he was at Starbuck’s.

I took the last day of school off and took the boys to school.  They had a fun last day with Miss Jacci.

We now have a kindergartner. So proud of this dude!

To celebrate we headed to Coldstone for ice cream before cooling off in the pool.

It’s officially summer in the Carr House!

Lot’s of time in the air conditioned house playing the Wii.

Jackson drew this yesterday, it looks like one of the characters in his favorite Nickelodeon show and iPad App from Team Umi Zoomi. Pretty good for a kiddo that needs a little therapy for fine motor skills.

He is so fun.

I finally finished the family room drapes. Love that Jackson was admiring them.

That is our past month. Looking forward to seeing my family and going to an Angels game this month, and hopefully I will very soon paint my bedroom. The boys are in summer camp in the mornings and for the first time since Nicholas was born, Mike has a few hours alone every morning.

Have a great week!

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I can’t believe that it was over 2 years ago when the seed was planted.  After we put the Christmas decorations away I knew I was really tired of our wine country themed kitchen.

Our kitchen before…

Instead of putting things back the way they were, I filled a vase with some lemons and an idea began to form. It simmered for quite awhile. What I was thinking was very different than what we were used to.

We had played it safe decorating our first home (Who am I kidding? I didn’t really decorate it at all for the first 3 years we lived there).  The walls were plain and white; the tile, white; the carpet,white;..really, it was a lot of white. It was the first place we owned and we could hang stuff on the walls, but we didn’t for a long time.  We didn’t know what to do with it, so we didn’t do much of anything.

Oh, but we did have a huge island with a Corian countertop. It was purple. We selected it when we built the house.  Purple? What were we thinking? Now I am wondering if it was that countertop choice that made me want to move. Did I mention I only dislike one color, only one?  Yep, you guessed it….purple. I don’t think I disliked it then. Heck, I also had 2 bathrooms decorated in purple stuff. But today, yeah even my 5 year old knows that I don’t like purple.

Here it is in all it’s purple and white glory (at least this photo was taken after I wasn’t afraid to try a little decorating). I guess a wine country theme worked great with purple.

And WOW!! That is a lot of white, and I think the tile had purple tones in it. I think the grout was purple.

What do you know? There are the lemons on the right side of the island. Maybe the seed was planted a long, long time ago.

When we built our current home, we opted for whole house “Apache Tan”, and other than my craft room and my oldest’s room, lived safe with a house full of earth tone decor for almost 7 years.  Brown walls, brown tile, beige carpet, stone, cherry wood, brown leather…BROWN.  Want proof…here is the “before” family room.

A little disclaimer…this is when it was nice and neat…(circa 2005 or 2006) that would be before kids. Apparently, it was also when I didn’t know I should turn off the camera flash and use natural light when taking a picture.

(If you thought I was going to show you reality this early in this blog’s life, sorry. If you really want to know what real life not picked up looks like…follow the link in my side bar to my personal blog. I am sure there are pictures there that do not show a clean and clutter free home).

That original seed that was planted a couple of years ago began to fully form into a new vision for our home.  A vision now that has taken on a life of it’s own. How is that one idea or project leads to another, and another, and a 100 more?

My dilemma…a limited budget (don’t most of us face this?). The first 2 jobs were to replace the badly worn carpet in the main rooms and paint. Painters are expensive and I have a long list of needs and wants that gets added to daily. The square footage of the immediate floor replacement was less expensive to hire out.

We opted to have the 800 square feet of new flooring installed for us.  Leaving the painting as our first big DIY project . Phase 1 of “Project Paint” started in February and involves close to 2,500 square feet of our almost 4,000 square foot home.

As of today, we have finished around 2,000 square feet, with 500 to go, plus repainting all the doors and trim. Our flooring has been installed and now it seems we are forever in the middle of a DIY project.

Stay tuned as we share our tales of joy and frustration.  I’ll sign off with this sneak of what’s to come.

Michelle

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While I was building that website, I also decided to move my original blog over to a self-hosted website and rename it Life Of Carr’s here I will be talking about life in our little corner of the world.

So how about a speed catch up of 2012, before I resume a more regular posting schedule.

JANUARY

Nicholas turned 5 and had a Super Mario themed birthday party where he invited his pre-school friends and they made pizza’s at a local bakery.  The kids all loved it!

Jackson was star of the week at school and Nicholas helped him with his poster.

Mike and I took advantage of parent’s night out and left the kids at the pre-school while we enjoyed an evening out.

FEBRUARY

We had an awesome Superbowl celebration with friends and lots of yummy food.

Nicholas loves to watch Super Mario videos on YouTube and then he teaches Mike how to play. Sometimes it doesn’t go so well.

We started our home improvement projects by ripping out the baseboards in the rooms that were getting new flooring.

The boys jumped for joy over their Valentine’s gift…a trampoline.

Before the new flooring went in we started painting the family room and kitchen.  Our one coat paint took a coat of primer and 2 coats of paint. And there are still a few areas, I think that could use another.

MARCH

And finally it was flooring week.

Since all the main areas were a mess with the flooring, everything was moved out and the boys spent most of the days crammed in our bedroom.

We took a break from projects to enjoy an Angel’s spring training game. It was a perfect day for a game.

I painted the office and Mike took the boys to the Ostrich Festival with some friends. It was a super hot March day.

We celebrated Mike’s birthday, the day after.  His birthday we worked all day and late into the night to put the office back together after the flooring and painting was done.

Mike learned how to paint (yippee for me).  My hand was hurting from onset of carpal tunnel and it was definitely nice to get some help.

We still found time for some fun and silliness.

Hurricane Jackson swept through Nicholas’s room.

APRIL

We colored Easter eggs, Nicholas decided he didn’t want to smell vinegar, so he opted out…more for Jackson.

We spent Easter in California with Grandpa & Grandma Johnson

The boys like to destroy our bed on a regular basis.

I was able to spend a fun girls weekend with good friends at the Scrapbook Convention in Mesa

MAY

The past few weekends have been spent sewing drapery panels.

We celebrated Cinco de Mayo with watermelon margaritas (YUM) and a great night with friends.

We went to a wedding.

We made a gifts for teachers for Teacher Appreciation Week (how I made these is posted here).

Sometimes we take naps and watch TV.

And today we read lots of books.

That’s plenty for today.  We’ll see if I can get back to a regular posting schedule. Have a good week!

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Are you like me and waited until the last minute to figure out teacher gifts for teacher appreciation week? Between teachers, classroom aides and therapists I have 7 gifts to come up with for my 2 boys classrooms.

I usually give each teacher/aide/therapist a gift card accompanied with some kind of hand-crafted item and I almost always wait until the last minute.  My oldest has been in the same class all through his 2 1/2 years in pre-school so some of the teacher/aides are the same, so I haven’t been able to repeat a gift yet .

Imagine my absolute happiness to stumble upon this cute (and free) printable yesterday at  Crafty Texas Girls. I was over there looking at Samantha’s awesome stair transformation post and many other great articles and she solved my last minute dilemma for teacher gifts.

I started with a 5×7 canvas in Photoshop, pulled in the printable, added a transparent turquoise background, some red digital chevron papers from Lilly Bimble and hit print. Easy! Then I headed off to Target and cleared them out of turquoise RE frames and a couple of black ones too.

Next I needed some cards, so I headed to my craft room to whip up some cards on my Silhouette. Whipping up 7 cards is not nearly as fast as it sounds, but I kept it simple with  7of the same design and I cut out the main elements on the Silhouette and used Studio Calico’s Elementary paper collection.  At least I got to catch up on a couple of Grey’s Anatomy episodes while I was at it.

If you are still needing a quick gift for Teacher’s Appreciation Week, head over to Crafty Texas Girls, say hi, and grab the free printable. We took them to school today and the teachers loved them!

In between continuing with the website development, I’ll be back with more to share this week!

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Here are the snippets of my day, my 12 on 12 for January

(1) Pancakes for breakfast before school. (2) Me and the new camera, thanks to the parents – I need a haircut. (3) taking a much needed quick break this afternoon after non-stop meetings and demands from when I walked in until late this afternoon. (4) Lot’s to do according to my planner. (5) What’s on my podcast list this week (6) New Powerball ticket, the one I turned in was a loser. (7) Ouch, what it costs to fill up the Tahoe at $3.29/gallon (8) That’s my boy, one shoe on one shoe off, let’s go outside! (9) Mario is getting ready for an overnight trip to the bakery, where he will be the star of Nicholas’s birthday cake on Saturday. (10) Looks like the first week back after winter break was a bit tough on Jackson (11) Pinterest – the ultimate time suck (12) Kiddos asleep, now it’s play time for the grown ups

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