LSNED - the final installment

Title Page

I added all the pages to a 4x6 album I purchased at Target. I cut the excess photo sleeves from the center of the album because it was too bulky.

All done!

Still More LSNED

It is nice to be reminded how lucky I am to work from home.

Anyone prefer laundry???

True couponing really is a part-time job!

Monday mornings see me finishing the laundry and any other chores I didn't quite get to over the weekend. I always feel so accomplished once I can call it "done"!

Here is one instance where I am happy I'm not including photos on my  LSNED pages this year!

More on LSNED

My layouts from last year's LSNED album were featured in prompts 15a & 17 this year. So exciting!

I actually took off the 19th - 21st and didn't even tell my family - I knew if I did they would lay claim to my free time. I spent my days while the girls were at school being creative.  Loved it!

While I was playing hookey, I also took care of some medical stuff. :p

Anyone else have this problem?

My babies are seniors in high school. And adults now.  Holy crap, when did I get so old????

LSNED

Yes, the sticker chart is doing a pretty good job of keeping me on track!

Becca didn't get what she wanted for her birthday. She wasn't at all shy about voicing her displeasure either.

Because thinking you know a better way home can add an extra 15 minutes onto your trip!

Heading out to the doctor first thing in the morning (when you are normally exercising and writing morning pages) throws everything out of whack.  Thank goodness for reminders!

You can't always fight it and soldier through. Sometimes you just have to surrender.

LSNED

Just as many of you are feeling, the temps around here have turned decidedly toward Autumn!

Nothing earth shattering - just a traffic jam caused by flooding and mudslides on major highways around here - the remnants of Tropical Storm Lee - that caused me to be late for a meeting a work.  But it does remind me that there is little in life that I can truly "control".

Pretty self-explanatory.

We watched documentary films regarding the heroes of 9/11.  Seeing those images again - planes, fireballs, buildings collapsing in a cloud of grey smoke - gave me the same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that it did ten years ago.  I actually didn't create this page until two days later.  When I was still feeling the energy drain from having watched the news coverage.  And it isn't that I don't want to be "informed" but all media coverage has a negative effect on me physically, so I just stay away from it as a general rule!

In this case, I just allowed myself to go with the listlessness and lack of drive to do anything productive or creative. I did what I HAD to do - laundry and grocery shopping - and left the rest for Monday.

Well, that catches you up with my LSNED pages up to a week ago. The rest are done up to date, but waiting to be photographed. Life has been crazy busy around here.  I have a lot to catch you up on, but seemingly very little time in which to do it.  But I'll be back later!

LOAD and LSNED - Day Six

On the Sixth, I completed three more LSNED pages:

Sunday is shopping day for me.  I always make a list and coordinate coupons. And end up in a mess when half the items on my list aren't on the shelves at the store!

This layout celebrated having completed my 30 LSNED backgrounds on the 5th.  Just start. It's half the battle.

With the girls back in school, I was able to crank the tunes and do some strength training.  Those September daily goals are going well!

LOAD and LSNED - Days 3, 4 & 5

Technically, I didn't actually scrap a layout on Sept. 3rd.  But I'm counting all those Big Idea Festival layouts I finished on the 2nd for the third... posted here... because as far as I'm concerned, by Day Three I already had SIX layouts done!  And since I'm not following daily prompts, I'm already getting confused about what I did on which day anyway!

On Day Four, I turned my Storytelling Sunday post into this layout. I know you can't read the journaling here, but if you click the link for the post, the whole story is there, in more detail than I could fit on the layout! And yes, it is a Cathy Zielski template.

On Day Five (Labor Day here in the U.S., so a holiday for us), I got seriously inspired by Ginger's LSNED pages and the wonderful little packet of ephemera I received in the mail from her, and decided that I would create pages for LSNED!  The trick was they had to be so ridiculously simple that I could finish each one off in no more than ten or fifteen minutes a day.

I started with a 4x6 creative pad from Pebbles Inc. (old Theodore line - from my OLD stash), and added a chipboard circle with a rub-on date (Karen - all those wonderful rub-ons you sent are being put to good use!) and journaling block to each of the 30 backgrounds.  The journaling blocks are mostly from the Making Memories {Note}Worthy line (also from very OLD stash - seriously, 2007!). It took me about 3 hours to assemble all the bases. Okay, because admittedly I obsessed about trying to space out the background colors so there was variety and stagger which journal note and which type of date went on them to keep it all looking random.  Type A tendencies are hard to kill.

With these 30 bases complete, I can add as little as a line of journaling and call it done.  Or I can get more detailed with embellies like ribbon and butterflies if I have a little more time.  In addition to creating 30 bases, I finished the first three pages on the 5th:

 Oh... Ginger ... that package of ephemera is almost all used up already!

LOAD and LSNED - Day One

I'm not sure if I've ever started a class (set of classes) so thoroughly UNprepared!  I should have been gearing up for Mother LOAD during the first nine weeks, getting my game plan in order, knowing what I'd be scrapping during the 26 day challenge.  But not me!  I didn't do a single one of the assignments in the first nine weeks!

So here I am on Day 1 of a 26 day challenge to scrapbook a page a day... without a clue.  And yet I pulled it off!

With a 2 page 12x12 layout that has been in the back of my mind for awhile. Yep, the chocolate! It is a super simple collage of all the chocolate wrappers and then photos and journaling borrowed from my blog posts.  No embellishments necessary... good thing since there wasn't any room!

And for anyone new to my blog - you can read all about the chocolate adventure, including what is in the teeny tiny journaling, by simply clicking on the "Sarah in London" label at the end of this post.  It will bring up all of my posts about my Chocolate Around the World tasting adventure courtesy of my daughter Sarah.

I'm still unsure about participating in Learn Something New Every Day this year.  With LOAD (which I really want to do!) I just don't think I'll have the time to "create" anything additional.  But if a blurb on my blog counts... today I learned that having stuff pre-journaled in a blog post makes it really easy to cut and paste and throw together a passable layout in no time! Which makes me wonder... how many more great layouts are waiting in the archives of my blog???

On Food and Folly, Free Things, and Finishing!

Becca works as part of the wait staff at a nursing home. I guess she's used to seeing this on residents plates and too used to spaghetti or mac and cheese at home!

My upstairs office is still a work in progress, but I really do like it up here. I've got enough of a set-up now to at least be functional. Still need to get a printer up here.

My fitness pal has a FREE food tracker (based on good old fashioned calorie counting), weight tracker, exercise tracker and community. All the things that weight watchers offers... but FREE!

And that's all she wrote folks! It feels so good to have kept up with this. I have the last 8 or so days of layouts to print out and tuck into my album and it is DONE for this year! With room to add next year...

On Food, Friends, and Fields

I have to admit that I haven't been feeling well for awhile, so I took no pictures at all for the last several days. To represent my lessons, I borrowed from the internet and old photos. The soccer photo is actually last year.

On Photos and Facebook

Monday I learned that a dentist appointment is a good excuse to leave home early and do a photo shoot!

Getting involved in said photo shoot can cause one to lose track of time and nearly be late for said dentist appointment.

But all is well that ends well... no cavities! 

Tuesday I learned that playing with the photos taken in said photo shoot could be a lot of fun!

In fact, I learned that one photo shoot could provide material for three days worth of lessons! Particularly when one begins feeling under the weather and too tired to pay attention to what one might be learning that day.

By Thursday morning, thanks to a ridiculous lack of sleep and inability to breathe, I was barely functioning. In fact, it was very reminiscent of this day.  In the past three days, I have emptied more Puffs Plus boxes than I care to count. And now I'm out ... off to get some more Sudafed Triple Action.

On Food and Photography

Jay and I had a dinner out. Even though I didn't finish the pasta OR the dessert, I left feeling uncomfortably stuffed. Then I looked up the calorie counts for these choices. Yikes! This single meal (if you ate it all) is 1900 calories!

The photos are from the TGI Friday's website. I didn't take my camera to dinner.



I didn't take my camera to the girls' soccer game today either. And I wished I had. The creek had beautiful dappled sun sparkling off it. There was a lovely shadow of the red covered bridge in the water. And there were lots of opportunities to get good photos of the girls playing (except they don't like me to take pictures at their games.) I may head over to the field tomorrow and see if I can catch some shots of the stream!

On Fruit and Friendship

On Fruit:
Yesterday's lesson was a little silly. But there it was. And I couldn't resist adding a little humor to this book! The note is DH's way of telling me I need to go to the grocery store.... as if the empty fruit basket weren't clue enough.

On Friendship (the real point of this post):

Some of you know me in the physical world. You may have known me for years. Some of you know me in the virtual world. You may have been following me for awhile and know quite a bit about me and my world. Or you may have only recently found my blog and are just getting to know me.  It doesn't matter.

Today's lesson came early this morning. I was working my way through Google Reader and the feeling washed over me like a gentle wave caressing the shore.

Physical or Virtual World - it doesn't matter. Old friend or New friend - it doesn't matter. Each connection we make, each bond we forge... are all REAL. And these friendships sustain me, they validate me, they feed my soul.

By 8:00 a.m. I knew this. I could feel the post stirring inside me. I left my computer to shower, dress, and contemplate. When I returned, I changed my page-a-day calendar to today's date and read this:

"Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive, and it is only by this meeting that a new world is born."  Anais Nin 

The Universe was definitely speaking to me this morning. And I felt that wave of gratitude grow and swell until you could have surfed on my happiness. I felt all those new worlds in me and I was amazed by the strength of the feeling.

It wasn't a single blog post. Or a particular email. Or even the song that was running through my head. It was the sum total of it all.

Do you know what a profound effect you have on my life, sitting there in your own world somewhere behind my computer screen?

Have I told you how much I appreciate you being here? How much I love the comments you leave? My world is more abundant, more vibrant, more beautiful because you are here.



So to each of you reading this, I just want to say thank you... Thank you for making me laugh. Thank you for being a shoulder to lean on when I need to cry. Thank you for validating me. Thank you for supporting me and cheering me on.

Most of all, I want to thank you for being a friend.

And leave you with this: