Four days left of my summer

That's right...only four days to go before I head back to school for meeting, more meetings, and just possibly more meetings. I have two weeks of meetings before school even begins on August 18th. Where has my time gone? Why are there so many meetings???

In honor of going back to school, I went shopping for my usual "back to school" outfit (or two), plus I did a little something to my hair. I've wanted to color it for a while now but didn't really know what I wanted. So yesterday I took the plunge. I still didn't know what I wanted until the hairdresser and I just started talking. She showed me different colors and talked me through the process. Once she started, I was ready to roll! After two hours, I walked out looking like a rock star!! I don't think these pictures do my hair any justice--it was late, we'd been painting all night, and I was tired!

On a sadder note, I received word this morning that my good friend Kodi and her husband Trai had to put down their dog, Max, last night. I cried when I heard the news, and I cried again when I read her blog dedicated to her buddy Max. I know how much that dog meant to her family (they gave him a home when no one else would), and I cannot imagine the pain they are in today. Apparently, his stomach turned inside out and upside down and sideways due to "bloat." They put him down and buried him in the backyard underneath his favorite tree. To Max! I love you Kodi!

Disney memories

While Todd and his dad work on our basement, I wanted to get a new blog out today. You might want to sit back and relax because this may turn out to be a LONG blog. I just finished scrapbooking our Disney World trip from LAST summer (bummer we didn't go anywhere this summer...) this weekend, so I wanted to show off some of my favorite pages from the album. This is my first album of completely no Creative Memories materials, with the exception of some paper, adhesive, and a few (very few) stickers. I am trying out a whole new world of scrapbooking, complete with chipboard, stamping, brads, eyelets, etc. This album even became an ABC album, even if a few letters were represented more than once!

Creating this album really made me miss my Disney World, and when Todd and I talk about going back, our faces just light up like we are two little kids. So...we've decided we are going back next summer for our 10-year anniversary, staying on-site in a nicer hotel in which we've stayed in the past. Todd is going to work his butt off to make enough commission so we don't have to pay for any of it out of our own money. Can it be done? If Todd has anything to say about it, he will work, work, work.

Sorry about the picture quality--I'm not quite sure how to take GOOD pictures of my pages yet.

This is the intro page to the album:

The second page is one titled "You Know You're Obsessed With Disney..." and includes several items like "when you have a Mickey Mouse tattoo and want more."These pages are part of a two-page spread for our dinner out to Chef Mickey's. I included the receipt because I wanted to remember that we paid $60.00 for two dinner buffets!

I am particularly proud of my Epcot page because it is my first true attempt at sewing on a scrapbook page. Thanks to Kodi (Thanks Kodi!!), I know how to draw my stitching first, and then sew on top of it!

I "scraplifted" this idea for the Everest rollercoaster page from one of my magazines. I don't remember who/what magazine it came from, but I loved the idea!

Over the course of our vacation, we found 27 "hidden" Mickeys out of several hundred! I know we will be on the lookout from now on when we visit, but for now, these will have to do.

I tried my sewing technique on this page, but I'm thinking after completing this one over a course of a FEW days, I won't be trying it again any time soon. It was a cute idea, but it took FOREVER to finish!! I wanted to it to look like it had been done sloppily on a machine instead of painstakingly by hand. Did I accomplish my goal?

I love these two pages simply because they are all about the castle! I don't care how many pictures of Cinderella's castle I already have, I will continue to take pictures of it every time we go! (That's also one of my "You know you're obsessed..." items too.)

When Lisa and I went to Disney World last summer for the Reading conference (Thanks Springfield School District!), we watched Mickey's show at Magic Kingdom. Todd did not want to stop and watch it, so luckily for me, I'd already taken several pictures!

For some reason, I just love these two pages of Nemo -n- Company. The colors just popped out at me, both in the pictures and characters. (It doesn't hurt that Finding Nemo is one my favorite Disney movies either!)

I love this page because when we rode "Pirates of the Carribbean" I took a nice picture of Johnny Depp's character, Jack Sparrow. Another nice touch is the Pirate Mickey!

Another sewing job on Mary Poppin's page--this time I used the stitching as my journaling lines. I was/am proud of myself on this one because the idea came from my own head!

I wanted to include the Tower of Terror page just because of the picture. If you can click on the picture to make it bigger, look at the woman in the second row! Classic!

Probably like most people, we had random pictures of different spots at Epcot. I made a collage with five pictures and surrounded them with flags of different countries. Although it's one of the busiest pages in the album because there's no white space, I liked the contrast to other pages.

Our last page in the album is a "Top 11 Things We Learned on Vacation" list. Hopefully you can click on the page to read the list.

I hope you enjoyed seeing some of our Disney scrapbook pages. I guess now it's time to move on to the family album. I'm so far behind in it that I haven't scrapbooked anything since Dad's funeral. Yikes! Maybe if we can get my scrapbook room downstairs finished, I'll get some more work done.

Cirque de Soleil: Saltimbanco style

Last night Todd and I had the pleasure of going to see another Cirque de Soleil show (our first being La Nouba at Downtown Disney). We met up with his two cousins, April and Aaron, and their significant others, Chuck and Sarah, for a night on the town. We had a great time! The show was really good--full of bright colors, beautiful music, and gymnasts/performers you would not believe. While Todd and I agreed it was not as good as La Nouba, we thought for a traveling Cirque, it was the best it could be. I understand they probably can't do all the phenomenal ariel acts because they can't/don't travel with that equipment. Still, it was worth the money to see this type of show. I'm now definately a Cirque fan for life!

Last night after we got home, Food Network was showing a Challenge show(we love to watch those!), and guess what the challenge was? The chefs had to create cakes showcasing Cirque de Soleil La Nouba! Seeing this show made us miss La Nouba and DisneyWorld that much more, so today I ordered the La Nouba DVD and soundtrack. What a geek!!

Racing...Baseball...Family...what I love about summer

Ahhh, summer...how do I love thee? Let me count the ways:

1)I don't have to get up early in the morning! I have been able to sleep in most mornings since school let out, and while I am loving it now, I know it will come back to bite me later when school begins again. (Sleeping in = Staying up late = Sleeping in = Staying up later--Are you seeing a pattern??)

2)I can scrapbook as much as I want. Of course, it would be easier if my scrapbook room was ready to use, but since it's not, I have taken over the living room. I actually got quite a bit finished this past week--I've been working on our Disney album from LAST summer, and I think I am halfway done. I will post pictures on here perhaps later this week.

3) Drag racing at Topeka usually signifies the beginning of summer. This year I tagged along with Todd and his dad for the first time and LOVED it! I know I have blogged about this already, so I'll make it short and sweet. Just look at my favorite driver Dave Connelly!! Isn't he yummy? I know it's hard to tell from the picture, but I know he was just as happy to see me as I was to see him.

One of my favorite things to do, as you already know, is take pictures. I love playing with the settings on my camera, and I have wanted to take this shot now for a long time. While I don't remember the exact settings, I know I slowed the shutter speed way down to 1/30th of a second or so. When the cars took off, I followed them with the camera. Voila! A blurry crowd, and a (semi) clear race! 4)Todd and I took his parents to see the Cardinals play when they came to town at Kauffman Stadium. Albert Pujols is Todd's favorite player, so we tried to get there early enough in hopes of getting his autograph. No such luck--no one is giving out autographs, but we were standing close enough during batting practice for me to get this shot. During this game, I didn't get any close-ups of my boy Yadier Molina.

5)It's been tradition for several years now for my family to get together over the 4th of July. We usually go see Firefall in Springfield and just spend some good quality time together. Over the past two years our plans have changed due to Mother Nature. Because of the early rain and subsequent fields o' mud, Firefall was pushed back to Sunday this year. Did that stop us from having fun? No! We went bowling instead!! I love to bowl, and Todd and I don't do it as much as we'd like, but when the family gets together, it's a blast! I wanted this picture below because that's my nephew Adam who just turned 21 this past March. We were supposed to meet up in Memphis shortly after his birthday, but he couldn't make it. I never got to buy him his first "adult" drink! At least I made up for it a bit--we both had drinks at the bowling alley! I can't believe how grown-up he is at last! Notice how white I am??

I am sure there are more than five reasons I love summer, but for now, I'll leave with my favorite picture of the fireworks at Firefall 2008.

New header...new world

Notice my nice new blog header?? I created that all by myself!! I would be so impressed with myself right now, except that little header took me about two hours to do. Kodi introduced me to a whole new world of digital scrapbooking, how to find free templates and kits online, and how to even make my own blog header. Thanks Kodi!!

I do want to try to make my own digital scrapbook page sometime--I might try it later today or tomorrow--but part of me doesn't want to give up on the paper scrapbooks. I love the thought of having my own scrapbook room downstairs, and I don't want to give that up. I could see how scrapping digitally might be faster once I really know what I'm doing, but I just have too much scrapbook stuff to go all digital. What would be nice is to become a "hybrid" scrapbooker--one that uses the combination of digital and paper. We'll see if I can even get through my first digital page before I entertain that thought!

Kodi and her family came up yesterday to spend the night at our house before they flew out to Orlando this morning. We all had such a good time just talking, watching Emmarie and Soze (our dog) play all afternoon. Bonnie, Kodi's friend, and hopefully a new friend of mine, came over too to see everyone while they were up here in KC. Now I just have to wait until next Sunday to hear all about their trip to Disney World and imagine myself in their shoes!

pool...sweet pool

Since I was on here yesterday to do a little work on my blog--note the added music and info on the side--I thought I'd at least update the blog today with random thoughts.


1. We have the pool up and running. I still don't think it's as clean as we can get it, and the water is a bit cloudy, but it's swimmable (is that a word??). Todd and his dad got in last night to cool down after their hard work on moving a downspout from the back of the house to the front. I took a dip today for about an hour or so and lounged on my new floaty. I think I am going to like this pool once I figure out exactly what I am doing!

2. I worked ALL DAY yesterday on updating, sorting, and uploading all of our pictures from our cameras to the computer. I had HUNDREDS to go through because I had not worked on any pictures since before Christmas last year! After finally sorting and working them all through Photoshop, I uploaded 169 pictures to Winkflash for ordering. Those pictures include school pictures from this past school year, my weekend with my mom when we saw "Wicked", my 30th birthday, Dad's funeral, Christmas, two racing weekends, and other random events. Now I just have to wait for the scrapbook room to be finished before I can drag out all of my stuff!


3. When I was working on my pictures yesterday, I decided I really want to upgrade to Photoshop Elements 6. I tried downloading a trial 30-day version, but Adobe said it wouldn't be available until July 1st. I'll try again! I really wish you got more of a discount than $20 if you had already purchased a previous version! I just want to "upgrade", not buy a brand new product!


4. Todd's cousin Andrea inspired me to do a little creative photography of my own. In her house in St. Louis, she has pictures of random (I think that's my word for the day!) things in St. Louis--a little cafe, a street, the arch, etc. So...I took random pictures of KC, turned them into black/white/funky pictures, and we are going to put them somewhere downstairs. If we do put in a small mini-bar, they will go around that area. Here are a couple of examples I did:




The first one is the KC skyline standing in the tunnel leading from Union Station to the Crown Center. The second picture (my favorite of the bunch) is the wall outside of the downtown public library. I just thought it was really cool, and I loved how it turned out in black and white.

Gotta run--next time I have to tell you about meeting my favorite drag racer Dave Connelly (he's a hottie!!!).

Finally!!!

Wow! Sit back...it might be a long one! Today is my first day back on the computer in what seems like forever, so I have a lot of catching up to do!

For starters, Todd and I have officially moved into our new house up in KC. (Technically, we are in Lee's Summit, but I think "word on the street" is that we can call it KC because we are in the area.) While we aren't 100% moved in, we are 95% finished with the upstairs and by we, I mean I. Todd did help by hooking up all of the electronics, putting furniture together, and moving the big pieces, but I am the one who has done all the decorating and unpacking. That's fine with me, though because I love to do that! I have tried to change up our style a bit from the old house. We do have our same bedroom "African" theme and the guest bedroom is still Red/White/Blue (we don't want to spend the money to change it yet in the hopes that one day it will be a nursery!!), but in the other rooms we have totally changed our decorating style. Our new kitchen is done in red/white/black just like the previous owners, and I bought Paris-themed pictures to go in there. I do want to go flea-marketing (Hayley--call me anytime you are up here to shop!) and try to find more French-style antiques. Our new living room is pretty much entirely new--new furniture, TV, etc. complete with a new picture of Claude Monet's "Dusk" to go above the fireplace.

This isn't our exact picture/frame, but you get the idea! We have condensed our old home office full of three bookcases of old teaching books that I never used, books we never read, and children's books that were never opened into 1 1/2 bookcases of books that we either read on a regular basis OR books that I hope to use/read later. (My favorite section is on the top shelf--my tribute to Broadway, complete with my "Wicked" playbill, broadway book, and snowglobe! I also plan on putting a picture of my mom and me together at "Wicked" on this shelf.)

I am planning on putting some pictures on here later once I find my card reader. Who knows where it is? I may have to go out and buy a new one! I also want to sign up for Jessica Sprague's online digital class, but I may have to wait until this fall to do that. As of right now, even with being off this summer, I don't know when I will find time to work on anything!

We are hoping to open up our pool this week. I actually wanted it opened a LONG time ago (especially in the middle of painting and painting and painting every room in the upstairs!), but since we had so much other stuff to do on the house, we didn't open it. Well, now the time has come. Todd's dad has tried to help us out, but since he doesn't really know what he's doing either, it's like the blind leading the blind in our backyard! The pool is uncovered, we've added a chlorine tab and have "shocked" it, but we think there is a leak somewhere by the filter. The filter and/or pump just doesn't seem to be working as well as it should (not that I know what it should be doing anyway!), so we are having a man Todd's parents know come out to our home tomorrow night to look at it and tell us everything we need to know. He used to do pool stuff for a living, so hopefully, he knows what he's talking about!

On the school side, I have been up to Chrisman High three days for curriculum-writing meetings. The district is trying to align the core curriculum for all three high schools, so I went to help out and was able to meet some new people. It was pretty funny--One of the classes I am teaching next year is English IV for seniors. I wanted to be in that group because it's a class I've never taught before, and I thought it would be a good way to figure out what I need to do to prepare. Ha!! Basically, it came down to another girl who has never taught English IV and Me! Two people who have NEVER taught this class were the ones writing the curriculum! I think it worked out because we were able to do whatever we wanted!! We ended up making/outlining six different units--one for each "Trister" (also something new--they don't have quarters/semesters, they have 3 tristers for each semester). We are planning on teaching a Cultural/Social Relationships unit with The Pianist or Kite Runner (both books I have never read!), a research/real world unit, two "optional" units--basically we can teach anything on the optional list, and then a Gender/Identity unit (Hayley, this is where the photography poetry will come in!).

I also found out that I will not have my own classroom next year. While I was initally upset because I was told in my interview that I would have one, I think I am actually exited. I don't have to "decorate"--something I usually spend a week on! and I can just concentrate on what I am teaching. I do plan on setting up part of our garage with shelves (the leftover ones from our old office) and putting those materials that I will use next year on them. That way, when I know I am getting ready to teach Of Mice and Men, I can just take everything related to that book with me and only have that at school. I was promised a file cabinet, so I figured I can use that for storage. We'll see how it goes!

Well, I think that's enough for now! I have a birthday party to go to tonight--it's April's little boy Maddox's first birthday (April is Todd's cousin he works with everyday). We got him an Elmo toy cell phone that sings and tells the numbers when you push on them. It's really cute!

Thanks for hanging in!