Yay! A Blog Again!

After trying and wanting for months to get my personal blog started, I have finally done it.  I have to say thank you to Zoe Pearn for her beautiful Blog In A Box, Serenity and to Leah (paperboutique) for her help with my coding when I just couldn't seem to get it right this morning.

This blog is for me to post about my life and all the goings on that it involves.  My marriage to my wonderful hubby, my children, grandson, my scrapping, my quilting, my running journey, my biker lifestyle and everything in between.  It may be once a day, once a week or just whenever.  It will be when a. I have time and b. when the mood strikes my fancy.

One thing I just recently began as well is a P52 project.  Well, I say P52 because I will scrap my layouts once a week and they may or may not include a daily picture or they may have just one picture that sums up the week.  I know, I am starting on July 1, the middle of the year instead of your typical January 1.  But, in my defense, I had just had major surgery when the new year began and it just wasn't feasible and I also wasn't in the best of times emotionally in my life.  So, who says I can't do my P52 from July 1 - June 30 every year?  So, it is my hope that I will be here each week to show you the layout I did for the previous week's activities and life happenings.

Being that I am doing P52, I will also use this blog as a journal spot so I can record the activities that go on in our lives each day so when I do my layouts, I haven't forgotten what I need to journal about!

I would LOVE to use this blog as a daily jumping board and post my daily chores and tasks on the agenda but, I am not quite sure yet if this will happen so, I won't commit to anything just yet.  You may see me do it from time to time though just to see how I like it!  Thank you to my sweet friend Katie (Katie the Scrapbook Lady) for this idea!  It's not something she does routinely but, she did it one day and it caught my attention and the idea was planted!

I don't promise this blog will be funny or entertaining, dull and boring or even interesting at all.  I just want to journal my life and I hope that somewhere along the way, some of you find something in my blog that you connect with and it helps improve your life in some kind of way.  Whether it gives you creative inspiration, makes you want to go give someone a big hug, puts a smile on your face or just gives you something to read to fill some gaps in your day.

I tend to type like I talk....so don't be surprised if I take you around in circles and get off track a few times.  I am easily distracted so, I may be talking about laundry and jump into something about the Air Force (proud Mommy of a brand new Airman!) all in one paragraph.  So, no promises for correct punctuation, grammar or spelling either!

Now, since this is brand new and my first post and I just started my P52 on Friday, I need to do a bit of journaling to capture my family's activities over the last 3 days.

Friday, July 1 - Took Megan (Chunky as we lovingly call her - story behind nickname another time) in the morning to see Marcus for a 45 minute visit since she hadn't seen him in 2 years since his move.   Then very soon after arriving back home, she left me for her month long visit with her real Dad.  Of course, she left a crying Mommy.  This is the first time in 10 1/2 years since her Dad and I separated that he is taking her for this length of time and it will be the first time I have been without children at home for this long either.  Not surprising, with her being 14 and beginning high school this fall and quite the social life, she was not happy to be going for this long.  But, it is beyond my control.  I just hope that I am able to have her for her Sissy's USAF graduation activities July 20 - 24.  I felt sick ALL day.  I did little more than lay around on the couch hoping to feel better.  I didn't even unpack my bag from my return the previous day after a 4 day visit with my parents.  So, unlike me.  I typically always get unpacked from a trip either the same day I arrive home or the very next day - early!  Call it a little bit of OCD.

Saturday, July 2 - Woke up feeling much better.  Jonathan and I had an early start to our day and went out to run some errands.  We hit Wal-Mart to pick up my newest movies I ordered (I am a HUGE movie buff with over 550 in my arsenal), to pick me up an AMAZING new Enell sports bra after it came highly recommended by some of my friends over at the Sweet Shoppe Designs community, then we hit a Barnes and Noble so I could pick me up a weekly planner to keep track of all of my Creative Team duties.  I don't have a ton of creative teams, I am just a huge list maker and I got tired of having little notes scribbled and scrabbled in my spiral (I keep a spiral next to me all the time and write down all kinds of lists during the day) and then try to thumb through them to find what I was supposed to be doing when.  And I didn't want to use our family calendar cuz let's face it....they love looking at my layouts but, they don't really care to know how I come about making them.  We finished off our errands with a trip to a local ice cream shop where we buy popsicles and cream pops.  In fact, we just discovered the place last week and have been there 2 Saturdays in a row now to buy them.  They are so cheap at just .38 cents each and they have like 20 or so flavors.  They are made with real fruit and are simply AMAZING!  Every one I have tried so far has been fantastic.  I try and avoid the cream pops as they are higher calorie so I have only tried the coconut and banana so far.  But, by far my favorite is......wait for it.....Pickle!  Yes, they have a dill pickle popsicle.  It is so yummy, tastes just like drinking from the pickle jar or sucking the juice out of a pickle like I used to do at the movie theater as a kid.  There are even tiny pieces of real pickle in there - see....real ingredients in every one!  We tried to finish off our day with a run around the neighborhood, or I did rather.  Jonathan and I set out to run 3.1 miles but, I only made it 1.12 miles.  My music on my phone was skipping, taking forever to load and then quit working altogether.  Couple that with the fact that I just don't run well in the evening, I was a quitter.  Hubby continued on and ran his 3.1, show off!

Sunday, July 3 - Was up at 2:30 a.m. this morning.  Just can't seem to get my schedule right and really only sleep about 4 or 5 hours a night.  I think it has a lot to do with my little grandson and his recent diagnosis of hearing loss (more on that later too) but, I wish I could get more sleep cuz let's face it, I need it.  I scrapped a layout while I waited for hubby to wake up.  Then we started our day off right and set out at 7 a.m. to do our run.  I told myself that I would NOT let the pavement win today and that I would definitely put in my 3.1 miles!  And I DID!  Not only did I do the 3.1, I kept going on the momentum I had and put in 3.36 miles.  I always feel so much better after a bad run when I can have a good run the next day and rebuild my confidence.  We then headed out to pick up our groceries for the week.  Not much needed this week though as we are both pretty much eating salad for our lunch and dinner each day.  We have a ton of salad in our refrigerator!  Then with the help of Leah, this blog got created and I spent hours playing around with widgets (which still need work), surfed all of my digi scrap sites and then it was time for hubby to grill us some pork fajitas.  I went outside with him and was going to journal but, I got so sleepy that I wound up falling asleep on my wicker love seat a few times.  So, I decided a nap was in order.  Came inside, turned on my ceiling fan, crawled into my snuggly bed and napped for 2 1/2 hours only to awake to dinner waiting for me thanks to my wonderful hubby.  The rest of the evening has been spent writing this post while watching Ace Ventura.  I might start on a new layout before heading off to bed tonight or I may ask hubby to rub my aching legs with some Icy Hot  and just curl up on the couch for the rest of the night.

I will leave you with my most recent layout....the one I did today that I am super proud of.  Not my usual style of layout but, I love the journaling I did and I love it's topic - running.  I am so in love with running lately that I can't help but love any layout that captures my progress!

For this layout I used Rosey Posey's Luv 2 Run and Darcy Baldwin's Me and My Shadow Light font.

I will be back soon with some more nonsense!  Hope you all have a Happy 4th of July (if you are in the states) and if not just have a great start to your week!  

Hugs,

NeeNee