No day like today....

Come join me for class this Wednesday!

  Come join me this Wednesday, September 23rd at Scrapbooks etc for a fun new class I am teaching, "Take a Memo". This is a decorative wire project where you will learn to manipulate, bend and twirl wire into a fun photo and memo display  to enjoy in your home!  Class is from 10:30am- 1pm.  All you need to bring along in addition to your basic scrapbooking supplies are a pair of needle nose wire cutters and 4-6 2"x 2 or 2"x 3" photos.  We are using some fun products from 7 Gypsies on this project, the ephemera pack, some of the mini clips and fasteners and a little bit of the new paper tape!

Roadtrip to Flagstaff .......

Well back on August 14th Alyssa went to Flagstaff, but none of her stuff went with her! So Last week myself and best friend Laurie Stamas made a little girlfriends roadtrip up to NAU to deliver all her goods to her and help her haul them up the three flights of stairs to her new dorm room!  We were lucky, athletes get to move in a day before everybody else so there were no parking problems or crowds to deal with! Within a half hour we had all her belongs moved into her new room.  Her roomie was arriving the next day  decorating would be happening after we left but I will share a few shots so you can see the bare bones of  what a studio apartment dorm room is like... not bad in my opinion! They have a small but nice little kitchen that includes a little four burner stove with an oven a sink, and a 19 cubic foot refrigerator with a small freezer. across from the kitchen is a little eating bar with a couple of chairs. They also have their own bathroom , ( this is huge!) and a large living area that includes 2 desks 2 large bookshelves, 2 wardrobes, 2 dressers and 2 beds.  They had more than enough room to add a futon end tables and and big chair and end tables to make a little mini living room.  She gave me a mini video tour over an ichat  session this week and it is really super cute now that it is all decorated.   I will have to post some photos when she sends me some so you can see the finished room project!   In addition to helping Alyssa get her room situated Laurie and I enjoyed some time hanging out together, which even though we live fairly close together we rarely get to do.  While Alyssa was working out with the dance team we enjoyed a wonderful happy hour at a fabulous wine bar and restaurant called Brix .  We had two hours of wine and chatting out of there beautiful patio in the glorious Flagstaff evening weather that was  awesome! We are both rather obsessed with iphone/itouch apps and we were laughing that the other patrons must have thought us a bit odd as we were playing with our devices  off on on throughout the discussion showing each other things we had recently downloaded and sharing photos.    We also had some fun texting some old friends, Miley and Kelly from Nebraska while  were sitting there who have been part of a few of our previous road trip adventures.... we miss those girls!!  I will close with a few fun pictures of Laurie, Alyssa and I.

So You Think You Can Dance - Live and in Person!!!

Anyone one who knows Alyssa and I knows we are absolutely crazy for "So You Think You Can Dance".  We have watched it religiously for four of the last five seasons it has been on.  We have attended the live tour shows when they come to town as well for the last three years, but one thing we had not managed to do was attend a live taping of the TV show.  Earlier this summer while looking at the So You Think You Can Dance website I noticed they had an icon on the homepage that said get tickets to a show, so I of course clicked on it, it led me to a registration area where I could enter my name and email address, and put my name in a lottery for tickets to be part of a live audience, I figured what the heck, why not.  This is the only way to get tickets to the show since they do not sell them... I would strongly recommend signing up for the lottery if there is any way you can get to California on short notice it was so fun.  Well anyway, on with the story; I of course got no email saying I had show tickets all season and frankly didn't really expect to get one, then last Friday night at 6pm an email popped into my box from "On Camera Audiences" with a subject line SO YOU THINK YOU CAN DANCE   I almost peed my pants. I had a small amount of time to click on a link and request a group of tickets to the finale show taping on Tuesday only a few days away! I got the tickets, then got the OK from Mike to take a road trip, then made THE CALL the Alyssa. We immediately knew who we had to invite to come along..... Alexia and Stephanie Stamas the only two other girls we know just as crazy for this show as us.... the only bummer was Laurie,(their mom and my best bud ) couldn't come due to a business trip conflict!  We have already decided we are all going to try for tickets again next season so we can get Laurie to the show!! We got plane tickets, and a hotel room and rental car, next and most importantly was outfit planning!  The ticket voucher came with a list of things  not to wear if you were going to be in a live audience so the girls needed to plan around this, the most problematic item was all shows had to be closed toed and flat( some safety restriction)... all of us except Stephie and to buy shoes!  We were on our way bright and early Tuesday morning, hopping on the plane to LA. First stop was to pick up the rental car then head to the hotel for a quick change into our show clothes then off to get to the line to turn our ticket voucher into actual tickets at 2pm at the Kodak Theatre inHollywood. The girls were taking photos from the minute we hit the airport as evidenced above,( photos taken on the plane, photos in the hotel room and in the car which is good since there was a strict rule about no phones or cameras in the theatre so we couldn't photograph any of the good stuff we saw.... dang!! We got our tickets and proceeded into the theatre around 4:30pm along with 3000 other people!  A normal show taping has about 300 people at it, this was huge in comparison. While coming in from the parking garage the girls saw Travis Wahl,( previous season finalist and current season choreographer) on the escalater and were going crazy!! We were seated in the upper balcony we we had a pretty good view of the show, in addition to the stage there were numerous large screens showing all the  performances it was very cool. We saw all the season 5 dancers as they entered and took there seats, as well as Mia Michaels, Adam Shankman, and Sonya Tayah and  Travis Wahl. We also saw Jeannine's and Evan's families as we were entering the theatre.... very exciting( mostly exciting seeing Jeaninne's family ... we are all HUGE Jeannine fans).    We all literally went crazy when they started playing the  SYTYCD theme song and Cat Deeley and the top 4 came out on stage it was so incredible!!!! Cat is even more gorgeous and tall in person.  During the  commercial breaks and before the show there was an audience warm up guy  that worked the crowd and kept everyone pumped and led the audience in recording some standing "O"s and cheering segments they would use on TV.  Unfortunately I think it will be a miracle if you see us on TV the crowd was so massive. In a normal taping of only 300 people it would be way more likely.  Without ruining tonites show, I have to say that there were  a couple numbers that totally blew my socks off and my two favorites Jeannine and Brandon are still leading the pack in my opinion and Nigels!!!!  We even got to hear Mary do her Hot Tamale train scream. After the show we got to watch a special rehearsal of a number they will be using in the Thursday night show using the top 8 dancers..and some special guests it was quite cool!  After the show we hung out in the Kodak Theatre center for some icecream waiting for the traffic to die down before we drove back to the hotel.  While waiting we brushed shoulders with choreographer Louis van Amstal... thanks for spotting him Stephie!! While pulling out the of the parking garage we saw another of our favorite dancers, Randi!!! Stephie quickly rolled down and window and screamed " we Love you Randi!!!" she was only a few feet a way and she smiled and waved back.... It was an incredible trip, with my favorite college girls, we can't wait to try to do it again next season.

Ok ...... this lack of blogging has gone on long enough!

Sometimes I take too long of a break from blogging and it makes it very hard to hop back in the blogging saddle again. Seems like even though I am busy, and lots of stuff if happening I keep thinking....well is it really blog-worthy?  My friends, family and industry peeps are inquiring about an update so I here I go...... December is over but some definitely noteworthy things occurred so I will try to do a little recap!
Christmas - it was wonderful, I was way more organized and  prepared from a card sending, cookie making, shopping point of view this year largely because I took a great class from Aby Garvey at Simplify 101. I made a great Christmas binder that kept my holiday to-do's, lists, recipes and holiday stuff in order and accessible. I would highly reccommend Aby's classes on organization she has them going on her website year round check them out! Christmas did feel like it happened all at once though, even though Alyssa got done with class at NAU on 12/10 she was unable to come home from Flagstaff until the 20th due to an extended practice schedule with the NAU dance team. They are attending UDA College Cheerleading and Dance National Competition in January and had a short break 12/20-1/2 for the holidays so they could prepare. Mike had also had a crazy month of travel for work and was literally only in town on weekends, two of which he didn't feel so well on in December so we were doing much of our family shopping and planning over the phone, he finally finished traveling on the 19th! Michael was done with school on the 19th as well so Christmas hoopla officially started the weekend of the 19th! We made a mad dash to finish up and wrap all the presents and 6 days later the holiday was upon us!  Next up in my recap is the Dancing with the Stars Live tour show that my mom and I attended...... WOW was it fun.  My mom and I both really enjoy watching the Dancing with the Stars program during the viewing season and we had attended the live tour show together last year too but this years show blew last year's away!To start off with we had AMAZING seats, we could see perfectly, some of the dancers even ran out down the aisles near us, and the choregraphy was so much better than last year, the numbers were all way over the top, with great costumes. All my favorite professional dancers from the show were there, as well as some of my fav stars from this season, i especially liked seeing  Lacy Schwimmer and Lance Bass do some of my favorite numbers from the season. Mom and I may be making this a yearly event! The next season of Dancing with the Stars starts Monday, March 9th can't wait! As I mentioned in my uber-short 12/29 blog post I also did a fun Scrapbooking Segment on the Channel 12 Arizona Midday show. I have had the fun of appearing on channel 12 all through 2008 as their local scrapbooking expert, I really enjoy doing it, and the folks at Channel 12 a super nice.  My after Christmas segment was on not being overwhelmed by your Christmas photos. My favorite project was a little 6 x 6 book that was filled with simple pages showing my christmas card photos for the last 18 years, my family and friends have all enjoyed looking at it, and it is now a permanent part of our christmas decor. I am looking forward to getting it out again next year and adding the next picture! I used a super cute Album from American Crafts, all I had to do was slide in my mini pages, the page sleeves were already part of the book! We also had the pleasure of having some company over the holidays. Mike's sister Janet and her daughter Theresa stayed with us from the 30th -Jan 6th. It had been a few years since Janet had been to Arizona and we thrilled to have her back.  We watched movies, played bocci ball and croquet, as well as Apples to Apples! We went shopping and enjoyed some fabulous dinners out! Janet and Mike both enjoy Mountain Biking so they took a bike ride in Usuary Park that Janet really enjoyed. A few days later we all hiked up the trail to the Wind Cave at Usuary Park before coming home to watch the Cardinals play football. The photo at the right is proof that I actually went hiking, I am not the out-doorsy type but I have to admit I enjoyed the workout! I think Mike could convince me to go again, I do wish there were bathrooms at the top though, I drank lots of water on the way up and it seems like a long way down! The photo at the top of this blog post was also taken the day of the hike it is a great shot of what the desert looks like this time of year in my part of Arizona. We were all sad to see Janet and Theresa go because that signaled the end of the holidays, back to school for Michael and back to work and work travel for Mike, and work for me as well. The first week of January whizzed by, I had not really been on my computer much over the holidays and I had some work to attend to immediately,so I am sad to admit that I am just now taking down my holiday decorations, I am doing a little every day with high hopes that they will be officially stored away until next year by the end of this weekend. I am looking forward to seeing ALyssa and some of her dance  team buddies tomorrow, they are driving down from Flagstaff so they can hop on a plane to Orlando Thursday morning to attend the UDA  College Cheer and Dance Competition they have been prepping for, it will be fun having a houseful of girls for a night!  Ok my recap is done.... I am going to make a concerted effort to blog regularly going forward.

lots of little things....

Seems like I have been busy doing everything but blogging! I will try to cover some of the things I have been meaning to post about! Lets start with Halloween! Halloween weekend was lots of fun like always but we had the added treat of having Alyssa home for the weekend. We were invited over to the Florence household to have dinner, and Michael,(he was Darth Vadar this year) went for what appears to be his last bit of trick or treating with his cousin Steven.When Michael tired of trick or treating he switched to handing out candy with MacKenzie, and of course tormenting her a bit as shown in the picture! Thank  Goodness Dana took lots of great pictures  because I didn't take many! Thanks for letting me hi-jack some photos off your blog Dana! Check out Dana's blog for more photos and a complete Halloween recap!  The balance of Alyssa's weekend home from college was spent taking her out to do a little shopping for some clothes to wear in the much cooler weather she is now experiencing up in Flagstaff at NAU. We also took her ou tot eat at Famous Daves Barbeque, our new favorite dining out place that she had not tried yet. I loved looking in her room all weekend and seeing her there, I have gotten used to seeing her room empty, I hugged her a bunch this weekend, I can't wait til she comes home again for Thanksgiving in a couple weeks.Next on my List of updates is a fun online class I have recently signed up to take this month, Get Organized for the Holidays taught by Aby Garvey at the simplify 101 website. Aby  is the queen of organizing I love reading her blog, and really enjoyed the book she authored with Wendy Smedley, "The Organized and Inspired Scrapbooker".  The last few years I have always found myself chasing Christmas instead of enjoying Christmas, I will be completing a Christmas plan organized in a binder using Aby's amazing organizational guidance! Class started today.. I am really pumped. If you want to get organized for everything important that happens in your holiday season it is not too late to sign up, join me!!  Next update on the list, as usual I have been reading quite a bit lately and thought I would pass on a couple good titles I have enjoyed lately.  My cousin Dana suggested I read "These is my Words" by Nancy Turner. It was a book I had not heard of, but I have found if Dana likes the book it is a good bet I will too! This book was a fictional memior of a pioneer woman, Sarah Agnes Prine that takes place in the Arizona Territories during  1886-1901. The book is written in diary format and shares a fascinating glimpse in to the lifestyle , hardships and loves of Sarah's life. I absolutely loved this book for many reasons, I felt like I really knew the characters personalities and since the book was written like a diary the writing had a very raw and honest flavor to it. I really liked that all the history facts that were mixed into the story were acurate so I learned a little history about the state of Arizona too. Another great fiction novel I recently read was "The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo" by Steig Larsson.  This book was a best seller in Sweden prior to it's release in the US and after reading it I can certainly see why.  I love a good mystery and this book has all the ingredients to keep me guessing the whole way thru.A rich Swedish industrialist hires a well known journalist to write his family history, and help him solve a 30 year old family murder mystery as well. There are many unlikely twists and turns and some very unlikely crime solving partners... great read! As always I am presently reading a great self help book right now too!  I had orginally heard about  "The Migraine Brain; your guide to fewer headaches and better health" when the author Carolyn Bernstein  M. D. was interviewed on the Today Show. I also listened to a fantastic interview on NPR of the author that I found completely fascinating. I have suffered from migraines for many years and have learned to manage them much better the last couple years after working closely with a nuerologist, tracking my headaches , taking medication and watching my diet. This book is based on the author's 20 years of experience as a nuerologist at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Bernstien guides readers through the process of  finding your migraine triggers, understanding the phases of a migraine, reducing pain and duration during a migraine, and understanding how the brain of the migraine sufferer is different than someone who does not suffer from these types of headaches.  I thought I was very knowledgeable about my migraines and I am learning lots of additional important and helpful information from this book. If you suffer from migraines this is a very insightful book to read.  

I Challenge you to give yourself a Present....

A few weeks ago my friend Stacy  Julian asked me if I was willing to give myself a present... the gift of present day scrapbooking that is, my answer was most definitely YES! I challenge everyone who reads my blog to do the same.  So often we focus on documenting the events that we are anticipating and capturing all that has transpired in the past that we forget to glory in the beauty of the present and life's everyday goodness.  I challenge you to take 10 photos that capture your everyday life and  put them in a little album that you can toss in your purse or put in your kitchen drawer.. put it somewhere you will look at it often to remind you to scrapbook the present and be engaged in your every day life. Look at this little collection of ordinary beauty often  over the next year, then lets all create a layout or a project next October 1st, 2009 to commemorate a year of scrapbooking in the present! ( Don't worry Stacy said she wouldn't let us forget!) I will post my little mini book pages below, I wanted to keep this simple and really reflective of what I see every day in my life, I like it , it is me and my world right here, right now, today.   Check out Stacy's blog today to see who else is joining in this challenge today .   Please leave a blog link in your posts on my blog if your are participating so we can enjoy your present day scrapbooking!

Art and Exercise

 Sometimes changes outside your creative life bring about good changes in your creative life. I have never been much of an exercise nut outside my dance classes, I just never found anything I liked that much to do. I admit these last couple years I had grown curious as most of my 40-something girlfriends who hadn't joined gyms previously  now started joining or started exercise programs.  I kinda wanted to join as well.... for social reasons if nothing else! But I kept thinking I just didn't have the time. Well I guess this summer I finally decided I had the time. (might have had something to do with how I looked in a swimsuit!) I haven't wanted to mention it here on the blog until I was sure this new workout lifestyle was gonna stick..... well almost 12 weeks later I am here to say it has stuck and I am reaping the benefits health-wise and in too many other ways to count. I have to give a shout out to my cousin Dana who has cheered me on each morning I show up at the gym at 5:15 am and work my way through workouts that can sometimes be quite intimidating. Many mornings in the beginning what got me going was knowing that she was going to be there too! Most people who know me, know that I can be a little gung ho when it comes to new activities, well the gym has been no exception I signed up to work with a personal trainer 3 times a week for a while because to be honest I was scared I was going to hurt myself on all the equipment, and it has been a great decision! I am learning lots and really increasing  my strength. Dana introduced me to the spinning classes and I quickly have become addicted, who would have thought it possible considering I haven't put my butt on the bike in my garage in years! I was actually excited last weekend when Mike took me to the bike store he goes to get a pair of the special shoes that will clip into pedals of the spin bikes we use in class. I find myself really craving my 4-5 sessions a week at the gym and truely sad if I miss them.  Since starting my gym shedual I have also been working on my diet. I read a great book recommended by my trainer at the gym that has really taught me how my body works with all the food that I put in it and as a result has changed my eating habits. You on a Diet: the owners manual for waist management  when I started exercising my trainer said 70% of my success would depend on  my ability to eat more healthy and after reading this book I really have focused on a healthier diet.  You're are probably wondering what my results have been over these first 12 weeks. The obvious ones are a weight loss of 11 lbs and I am thinking about 6-7 inches( I didn't measure myself before but my clothes are loose). I am a migraine sufferer and  my migraines have decreased by 50% as has my use of my prescription migraine medication.This right here mad the whole fitness regime worth it! I sleep better and generally wake up more well rested. Less obvious results but just as important.... I feel better about ME!!! in every way. I think because I am tackling physical challenges that are really daunting to me I feel less overwhelmed by other aspects of my life that may challenge me. I have felt for a while like I had lost a bit of my creative energy, basically I didn't feel like playing with my art supplies... and for me that is wierd. Well I am happy so say that feeling has left the building.This photo to the left makes me happy, it was taken in my art room last night. I have recently been reading a fun technique book called Acrylic Revolution and I felt like trying out some of the techniques  the author Nancy Reyner  shares in the book so I made the little canvas in this blog post last night. I had been wanting to  use some new stamps I bought a bit ago from Label Tulip, dang they have cute stamps and they totally made the canvas! I also got some of my inspiration from Tim Holtz at Creative Escape as well as on QVC yesterday, I just love his Grungeboard and Distress Ink products. I have to mention one more book I have recently been reading that relates to this post: stepping out of your comfort zone in life and in art!  Taking Flight by Kelly Rae Roberts is a phenomenal book. I am really enjoying her inspiring written words just as much as her art, there are many projects and techniques within her book that I am anxiously awaiting experimenting with.I would highly recommend it. Thats all I have today, thanks for listening, now that I have shouted out that I am committed to a healthier lifestyle I guess that strengthens the commitment more!