Thoughts on Walking....

Random thoughts that were going thru my head during my walk today.

My ipod is my new best friend for walking! OK, but someone with an ipod... Lauryn... Cole... someone, what am I doing wrong? My right earphone keeps falling out of my ear? Am I just deformed or something? What is up with that? Is there some secret ritual that keeps the earphone, earbud, whatever you call them deals actually in your ear?

I love Christian contemporary music. I also love gospel and praise music, classical, stuff like Michael Buble', Nora Jones, 80's and um dare I admit there is some Captain and Tenille and Carpenters on my new ipod? I know, I am showing my age...

I have determined the 80's music has a great tempo for walking! My newly re-aquired favorite is Huey Lewis Power of Love! I had to include the video today since I listened to it like 3 times today. Huey and Back to the Future are from the 80's years when I was dating my husband so it was like our time you know? Plus Darrel is still a huge Back to the Future fan and often watches the trilogy. But, most important for today's topic... great upbeat fun tempo to walk to. I was up and down those hills today without even realizing it! Mom do you remember them using that song at the movement inc. exercise place and all those thigh exercises? That was going thru my head today too!

I checked my distance today and I am between 1.4 and 1.5 miles in exactly 30 minutes. Did we all know that the ipod has a stopwatch feature? Love that and it was the first time I used it today.

In other walking favorites today there was Josh Turner's Long Black Train.... see I think I mentioned I have quite a mix. I love putting it on shuffle and not knowing what will come up next.... Anyway, back to Long Black Train. Love this song too! Was very into it during my walk today and when the lyrics start "Cause there's victory in the Lord I say, victory in the Lord. Cling to the Father and His holy name...." I was feeling such victory in the Lord I just about threw up my hands in praise while walking..... So if you hear a headline about a crazy lady walking in southern Indiana throwing up her hands, singing at the top of her lungs all by herself, um it was probably me.... someone would come bail me out or something right? Honey? Lisa?? Anyone??

Did I mentioned I am enjoying walking? That I actually like it? I was actually sad yesterday when we went to walk after church and it was looking like we'd get rained out. We wanted to try out a new path we discovered and it was all black clouds and spitting rain. We drove over anyway hoping it would pass and I'm praying, Lord, please, I really want to walk. That is a good thing right? Next thing I know I'm saying to Darrel "where'd the clouds go?" And it was all sunny and pretty and we got to walk! Thank you Lord!

Did I mention it feels good to walk? It like seriously helps my emotional outlook. Who knew?

OK, other song selections today while walking..... Timbuk 3 and The Futures So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades. Anyone an 80's geek like me and remember that? I don't know why but I loved that song.... Remember it being on that show Head Of The Class? I am showing my age again right?

Have I mentioned I get to go to CHA? Did you know its like 3 weeks away?! I am so stinkin excited!! I get to take 4 classes with Melissa Frances, Rusty Pickle, Piggy Tales and Daisy D's!!!! How cool is that. Cannot wait. I was beginning to mentally pack in my head during my walk. Any CHA tips from CHA alumni out there? This will be my first visit!! Lisa is going and Darrel is making the trip too!! Hopefully I'll be able to post some show peeks here for you!

Did you know birthday week is also fast approaching? It is the same week as CHA! I will actually be at CHA on my birthday! Cool present huh?

Until tomorrow... blessings for a great week!

Featured Layout!

Ok, so earlier today, I remembered that I had posted a LO last night and I thought I'd pop over to 2peas and scrapbook.com to see if I had gotten any comments. (Love comments! well... good ones.... bwa ha ha ha) When I pulled up my layout I had like lots of comments and I thought well cool, but wow, unusual. Then one of the comments mentioned she was glad I was in the top 10..... I'm thinking what?!! So I headed over to the main page of the gallery and at first I thought well bummer, I don't see it in the top 10 anymore. At that moment I realized I had been picked for the featured layout!!!! OK, huge grin on my face. How cool is that? I was like sooooooooooooo excited I immediately fired off an e-mail to my husband and friends. I was dying for my friend Lisa to answer me cause I knew she would totally get it...... I was on the verge of calling her when I got a reply! She was all happy too, which seriously isn't it even so much more fun when someone "gets" it and is happy with you? Of course now I am like goodness.... am I like the biggest dork ever? I mean is it sad to get so stinkin excited over being picked for the featured layout? Know what? I don't care! I am stinkin excited! Insert huge grin here.....

























To prove I am a scrapbook dork, um er...nerd.... I just had to show you the decal I have on my car. You will notice first that its um... pink... of course. My friend Lisa sells these thru Shabby Pink Designs. I had to have one. (for you local ladies, last time I was at The Scrapbook Tree they had some too!) Several of the ladies wanted to buy one at a crop we were at but many insisted there was NO WAY their husband would be having that on the car. Well can I just tell you that my sweet husband not only didn't mind, he took it out there, cleaned the window and lined it all up nice and perfect (which is totally his thing...) and put it on the car for me. I have gotten so many funny comments about this decal! One guy stopped in at work (we had never met) and while we were talking he says "so, are you the scrapbook nerd?" Tooooo funny! Love it! So now that you know they exist I am sure you need to run right out and get yourself one too. There are other colors besides pink... but seriously does that even count?

Have a great weekend.

No Place Like Home

Well I started this layout about 2 weeks ago at a crop and just finally finished it up. What is up with that? Seems like there has just been no time lately. I had these pictures of the house I grew up in and in my head they just seemed to go with the Maya Road trees and the Love Elsie embossed house paper and tree fabric paper. This was also the first time I used one of the Kaiser wood cutouts! How cool are those! The Scrapbook Tree had them the night of the crop so I had to try out a couple packages of course! I must say too how aweseome are those large chipboard letters? Did you know those are Prima? I think I have a couple different packs of those and will definitely be using more. I love the newsprint look they have to them. Love that! This layout will be used at an online mini crop at The Scrapping Spot this Saturday. Why don't you join us? We have lots of cool challenges and fun stuff planned!!

How has your week been? I got kind of knocked for a loop by bug bites of all things a week ago Friday. Have you had trouble with gnats or "no seeums" in your area? We have had a lot of flooding so they have been terrible here. Terrible!! When I would go to walk outside they would just swarm continually and while 4 are trying to fly up your nose, 5 others are trying to fly in your mouth. I would have on 2 kinds of bug spray and still no relief. Last Wed. night I had both walked and then mowed the yard. Friday I woke up with 10+ bites from my elbow to my shoulder. They turned into an inflammed red itchy mass which kept me up in the night with the itching. I could not wait for the DR office to open Friday AM and when it did they got me right in. I ended up with a steroid shot in my shoulder, a steroid pack of pills to take, plus an antibiotic which I am still on. Seems the bites turned into a secondary infection. That whole weekend I was popping Benadryls to try to keep the itching under control. The bites/rash have gotten much better, but been feeling not quite well still and not sure if its from the bites or too much meds or both. Hoping I am on the upside now. The DR and what I can find on the Internet both seem to say the bug issue should be short lived and as the water dries up the bugs get better. There already seems to be improvement and I was able to walk outside again yesterday.

Did you see the awesome news on the Shabby Pink Designs blog? Check it out here! So excited to be working with my friend Lisa and soooo excited for her and getting to work with The Doodlebug and The Scrapbook Tree which are both awesome area stores! Speaking of the crocheted butterflies..... they just might be coming to a kit near you soon..... Shhhh!!! More later on that one.

Hope you have an awesome weekend! Blessings!

Our Anniversary

So first of all, no fair comparing the wedding picture to this one OK? Because, yes, we have gotten older. Enough said. Moving on..... We had a lovely anniversary yesterday. This is a picture we took of ourselves after our dinner. Not too bad for a do it yourself photo huh? As we were taking it a lady walked by and asked if we wanted her to take it. We said sure. She got one but it was kind of far away and um full length. Lets not go there OK? ha. Plus she was holding my camera by like 2 fingers and I'm praying please God, don't let her drop my pink camera..... I know, she was being nice and I'm terrible. Anyway, I was glad we ended up with this shot.

My day started off yesterday with finding a dozen beautiful pink roses on my desk at work! Isn't my husband the best ever? See I told you he was great. Here's me with my flowers.

After work we headed out for dinner. We went to Max and Erma's. I had my favorite from there which is their gourmet fried shrimp. These are like the best shrimp ever!


















For dessert there was this AMAZING chocolate cake. Oh my goodness. Sooooo good. Calories don't count on your anniversary right?


















Then Darrel had a gift for me. Look what I got!! Pink ipod! Yippee... Now to just learn how to operate it. It is charging as I type. Remember me telling you how much I am a sucker for detailed, cool packaging? Well apple definitely has that one done. It came in this cool white like origami type box with a red elastic ribbon band around it. It has a cool little envelope with a note from Darrel and then the ipod itself was in this cool acrylic case. Love that.


















He even had the back engraved with my name and a message from him.

It was a great evening. The restaurant is right on the river walk in town. That was where we walked and took the first picture. We ended the evening at Barnes and Noble relaxing and browsing thru some favorite books and magazines. I found 3 books I need to get if I ever read all the stuff I already have. Maybe I'll see if they have them at the Library. They were The Shack, A Mile in My Flip Flops, and The Wednesday Letters. They all looked really good. Love books!!

Earlier this week we celebrated Darrel's birthday. Here he is blowing out his candles. Um, ok his tea lights.................... Bwa ha ha ha ha... See I somehow managed to forget birthday candles! You can't have a birthday cake without blowing out the candles. So I improvised and put 2 tea light candles on his cake! Ha. ha. I tried to make his dinner a little special too by pulling out some of our better dishes and using one of my Mamaw's old embroidered tablecloths.

My gift to him for birthday and anniversary was money towards this woodshop dust collecting system thing he wants. He likes wood working and has been purchasing tools, etc for that 1 thing at a time. But again, I am such a birthday kind of a girl, I couldn't not have something for him to open. Last year he did a birthday week for me with a pink gift every day for a week remember? So I told him this was "Birthday Week in a Box!"

I got him a tank top, sleeveless white T, black shorts, peanut M&M's Almond Joy and a Play Station mag. You should see how cute he looks in the white T and shorts. He's wearing it right now.

So I am off to play with my new ipod and maybe do some scrapping. Hope you have an awesome weekend! Blessings.

21 Years Ago

21 years ago, June 20th, 1987, I walked down the aisle to where this handsome guy was waiting for me. I remember wanting to throw my arms around him and give him a big hug. I didn't though. I figured I wasn't supposed to until they said "you may kiss the bride." I've always regretted that. I wish I would have hugged him. I was so calm and peaceful that day. I absolutely knew God had brought us together and I could not wait to be husband and wife. Now, here we are 21 years later and I would not change one thing. I love my husband completely and I love our marriage and all we are and have together. God has blessed us so much. Happy Anniversary Honey. ILY, P.

Happy Birthday Honey

Is this not the most handsome birthday boy you've ever seen? I sure think so. This is my sweet husband. Tomorrow, June 17th is his 45th birthday. If my calculations are correct this will be the 25th birthday we have spent together. Wow. I can hardly believe its been that many years. Know what he is holding? It's the pan that homemade carrot cake had recently come out of. Instead of licking the bowl, we scrape off every crumb from the pan. No carrot cake should go to waste right? Every year his requested birthday cake is carrot cake like his Mom always made for him and his twin sister Deanna. Of course that means carrot cake and icing from scratch and of course it is sooo not an easy recipe, but after 20+ years of making him one I think I now have it down to a science. Here was the finished result this evening.


















Not too shabby huh? It generally tastes pretty yummy too.

Can I just say how blessed I am to get to share 25 birthdays with this man? He is amazing. He is so handsome and still takes my breath away. He is the best husband around. He could give lessons. Seriously. He is my best friend. There is nothing that we do not talk about. He is a true gentleman and takes such good care of me. He is romantic, patient and kind. He is soooo gentle and has such a kind and gentle spirit about him. He is always there to help anyone who needs him. He tells me he loves me every day. He has never left the house without giving me a kiss and a "love you." If I even say "I was thinking it would be cool if we had ___________ or we did _________" he somehow seems to magically make it happen. He knows and understands me inside and out. He knows my passion for pink things and last year for my birthday he left me a pink present every day for a week. When we lived in Illinois and loved Oberweis Ice Cream and their awesome waffle cones, one night he brought home as a surprise not only a 1/2 gallon of ice cream, but actually thought to ask for and purchase an empty waffle cone so I could enjoy my favorite treat at home. After almost 21 years of marriage (this coming Friday!) he still opens doors for me. There is nothing this man does not know how to do and do well. He still holds my hand. He prays with me each day and takes me to church. He is amazing and he has the happiest wife around. I love you with all my heart honey. I love us. I love our life together and I wouldn't change a thing. Happy, happy birthday. You are the absolute best.

Dad's Day

Just one more quick post... can you believe 2 in one day? Earlier this week, or maybe last week Scrapscene had a link for the instructions to make this little origami shirt. I thought it was so cute and just had to use it for a Dad's day card. Cute huh? Just wanted to share!

A Yard Full of Men...........

Seriously. Did I have you wondering there for a second? We are putting a new roof on our garage/spare room today. We have some awesome, wonderful friends and family that are here to help us. We have been blessed with no rain and not too hot of a temperature too. There is a great deal of humidity but I am trying to do my part keeping them stocked up on cold water, sweet tea and lemonade. I also made them some homemade peach pie, apple pie and banana pudding. I figured that was the very least I could do. Our roof was damaged in the last winter storm. We didn't know it when it happened, but when the snow and ice thawed and we saw shingles on the ground, we figured that was NOT a good thing. Another blessing, even after our deductible, and even though they would only pay for 1/2 of the roof to be replaced, the insurance turned out to be enough to cover the whole job. Praising the Lord for that one!

So goodness when was the last time I blogged? June has been incredibly busy. Wow. First week started off with VBS and then week 2 we had to catch up on all the things that didn't get done on week one, plus do a bunch of stuff to get ready for the roof replacement today. Now this week we have Father's day, probably finishing the roof, Darrel's birthday is Tuesday and then our Anniversary (21 years!) is Friday.



















OK, a week ago, date night, I am walking thru the new Kohl's in town and I swear I heard these shoes call my name. Seriously.... they did! As I've mentioned, I've been walking. Well lately I've been having a hurting knee and leg. I wasn't walking in very good shoes (unless Cros count...) so I knew I was needing to get some good walking shoes. Well look at these! They had my name all over them! They are Nike walking shoes. They have pink! And they were on sale! So the past week I've been walking in these and I am noticing an improvement. Plus, look how cute they are! Ha.


















Just had to share this picture of the goreous Day Lillies by my porch that are blooming now. We are soooo not gardeners so last season we planted some stuff that would just come back and not have to be redone every year. Looks like these are doing fine huh?

Had a crop in town last night. We had a great time. Really, really like the owners at the new LSS in Vincennes. They put on a great crop. We had a nice goodie bag (with a pink pen!), each spot had an Ott Lite, good food for dinner and great company. We also made an ice cream and coffee run to Zanders next door before they closed. The LSS also had some new goodies on the shelf with some of the Kaiser pearls and wooden cutouts. Had to bring a few of those home with me. I am about done with the LO I worked on so hope to post that soon! They've asked me to teach at the LSS. I've never taught before nad not sure I want too but am also intrigued by the idea. I might do 1 class. Figure that is the only way to find out if I love it or hate it! Would you come if I had a class? I keep thinking that I don't know what I would teach them? Been helping my friend Lisa out more with Shabby Pink Designs too! How fun huh? We will be turning my last deer LO into a kit and I am going to design a mini book using the MM 5th ave line that will also be a kit and possibly a class. We shall see. We are also going to use some of my crocheted flowers and butterflies in the kits. I need a smilie here.

Hope you have an awesome Dad's day weekend. I need to go unpack from the crop. Make a Dad's day card. Finish and wrap my Dad's day gift and get ready for heading to my parents for a visit tomorrow. Also need to go check on the guys again. Have a great weekend. Blessings!

Dr Dolittle

Ask me how fun this LO was to make? FUN! When the Sassafrass Lass paper with the deer on it first came out I wasn't sure I liked it. Then I saw what Christine Middleton did with it and this photo of my husband with the baby deer popped in my head. Next a sweet friend at The Scrapping Spot RAK'd me a couple of Maya Road trees (how sweet was that?!) and I crochted the flowers and butterflies. It all came together in my head as somehow going together and above you have your result. I am soooo loving mixing paper lines and stuff! This one has paper from Sassafrass Lass, Scenic route, and SEI. It was in a recent Studio Calico kit. They do an awesome job mixing stuff that doesn't seem to "match" and making it work together. LOVE that. I also really enjoyed using my crocheted stuff on a LO for the first time. Got to make me some more of that!

We got the A/C fixed on Friday last week. A friend from church has a Heating/AC business and he came first thing Friday morning. He got it working for us and even came back when it stopped working again on us later that day. Turned out to be a problem with the thermostat and some wiring. Craig got it going for us and then my husband spent the afternoon running new wiring from the Thermostat to the furnace and from the Thermostat to the outside A/C unit. Been working great every since. Darrel getting that small window unit going for the night before it was repaired was definitely a life saver!!

Hope you are having a great week. It's late and I still need to run make a grocery list for tomorrow. Blessings!

Summer has arrived

Know what this is? This is what your thermostat looks like at almost 11:00 at night when your A/C is NOT working. Ugh... I so do not like the heat. My friend Lisa and I always say we don't do too good when we are too hot, too cold, too tired or too hungry... .I always add to that that any combination of the 2 can take me from zero to crabby in an instant. So guess how my evening has been? Guess what this is though?


















This is a now working small window A/C unit! yay. God bless my sweet dear husband. We had this unit out in our spare room. However it was not working either. When we plugged it in last season it did nothing. We never seemed to have the time to go back and figure out what was wrong with it so it just kind of sat there. Tonight Darrel opened it up and took it apart and discovered the problem. It had wasps nests in it! YUCK. So he got rid of that and cleaned it and viola! A/C for the bedroom so at least we have a retreat and will get a good nights sleep. Yay!! Plus, the A/C repairman is coming first thing in the AM so praying we will be all fixed in a jiffy!

It has been a busy, busy week. It was VBS week at church. When you work at a church and then also have VBS in the same week it makes for quite a week. Exhausting... but... well, well worth it. It is awesome to see the church full of kids laughing and singing and praising God. It always touches my heart. The theme this year was "Power Lab" and the kids got to see and do all kinds of cool scientific experiments plus they even had a small area with like turtles, frogs, birds, etc. Very very cool. They had one container that had tadpoles in it. Well on the way to VBS one of the days, someone found a turtle and brought it. They put the turtle in with the tadpoles and then seemed surprised the next day when the turtle was still there, but um no more tadpoles. Smile.... turtle probably thought he got dropped into a 5 star restaurant or something. My job this week was to run the sound and video and to be the "official photographer." This is a fun job because you get to wander around and take pictures of all these cute kids. Well yesterday 2 little girls called me over to their table to tell me that they had just prayed to ask Jesus into their heart. I could have cried. It was so sweet and they were so excited and happy and just beaming. I don't think I'll ever forget that. So, busy week, but also an awesome week.

Had a happy mail day today. Got my Studio Calico kit (which I haven't had time to open) plus I got this:

























Now how cute is this bag? I bought it on Etsy here after reading about it on someone's blog. It is a pink and brown scraps bag for my scrap room. It is made really well and has these magnets in the cuff and handle which make it really easy to hang just about anywhere. The fabric inside is also laminated so nothing will stick! Cool huh?

Hope you are having a great week. Things have been too busy to get to scrap and use my crochet stuff. Hoping that will happen at least by Saturday! Blessings.