Rio

Here are some extreme close-ups of Rio as I was playing with the macro feature on my new camera. Rio is normally very good at posing for pictures but it turns out that he doesn't like the me and the camera "in his face". It was hard to get much of anything, but oh well!

Calendar pages

My sister was super sweet and made calendars for me, my other sister and mom at Christmas time. The blank calendar is by All My Memories. She scrapped them for us and created a list for us to fill out on each month. All we have to do is add a photo and journaling. I love it! The "pages" (portions to the left of the month name), are designed so that they can be trimmed and put into a 6x6 album. However, I decided to keep the calendar in tact. So, I've moved the list to the side so that it covers the calendar grid and then just added my picture. Fun stuff.

Book - Hide & Seek

I'm pretty predictable...yet another book by James Patterson. What's amazing is that I still have so many to read...this is one of his older novels.

Anyway, I expected Hide & Seek to be part of the Alex Cross series because of it's title (all of the books in that series have "nursery rhyme" titles). However, this is not part of the series. Despite that, it was quite good. Still full of crime and suspense...all the good stuff.

Definitely recommendable. I took this on a day trip to Cleveland and was pretty much able to finish all of it in one day thanks to airport & airplane time.

Spring has Sprung!

Even though Spring officially began on Wednesday, we start seeing signs of it around here a few weeks ago...warmer days and blooms beginning. Daffodils and Bradford Pear trees were the first to smile at us here in South Carolina.

Unfortunately, we don't have many "early bloomers" in our yard (which I plan to remedy before next year). We've had some pansies that have been off and on all winter (see healthier ones below). But I was tickled to see this little purple flower peeking at me this weekend... the first spring bloom in our yard! I took advantage and tried out my new camera's macro feature.

St. Patrick's Day

These are some shots from our St. Patrick's Day celebration with Spencer. Every year we fix green pancakes for supper. We pull out the box of SPD goodies and decorate the house...and ourselves. It's always tons of fun! Spencer claims he does it because I want to...but I have a feeling he likes it just as much as I do! Poor Matt and Rio just put up with us.

Basketball Banquet

Here are a couple shots from Spencer's basketball banquet last week (there were not taken on the new camera).

Cute stuff

make your own here

Woohoo!!!!

This weekend I finally bit the bullet and purchased a new camera. It's a Kodak EasyShare Z612. It has a 12x optimal zoom and Optical Image Stabilization - the two main features I wanted. I haven't had a chance to play with it too much yet, but I am enjoying it. I just need to mess around with it so I can learn how to get the most out of the all of the features. I probably need to do a little reading up on photography terms as well because some of these concepts are a bit foreign to me.

Book - Little Earthquakes

Last night I finished reading Jennifer Weiner's Little Earthquakes. This is the third book of hers that I've read and I enjoyed it as much as the others...maybe a little more. It's basically about young mothers - a group of girls that become friends after they meet in a yoga class for pregnant women. I've never been pregnant but I think it gives a "real" look at being a new mom. Good book on being a new mom, on friendship, family, marriage...a little bit of everything. I thought it was neat that she also has "book club notes" in the back too...

Book - Three Weeks with my Brother

Recently, I finished listening to Three Weeks with my Brother by Nicholas Sparks (book on CD). This is the only non-fiction book he's ever written, so obviously its quite different than most of his novels. It's pretty much a biography. It's written switching back and forth between the past (going through his life) and the "present" (the three week trip with his brother). At first I wasn't sure if I'd enjoy it, but I really did. The guy has had a pretty interesting life (though not always in a good way). I'd most definitely recommend it, especially if you enjoy his books anyway. I'm sure learning about him is more entertaining if you actually like his books.

Goal Update

I wanted to set a realistic scrapbooking goal for 2007. I know I can't do the volume I used to, so I opted to encourage myself to do variety so that no albums get pushed aside. My goal was to do at least five layouts a month - all in different albums. January was easy b/c I had a scrapping weekend with my sister, but February was a more "normal" month. Here are the results so far:

January
2005 Album (12x12) - 4
Rio's Album (8x8) - 1
Spencer's Album (12x12) - 2
Christmas Album (8.5x11) - 4
Other* - 12
Total layouts in January: 23 in 5 albums
*The "other" was a mini album and several 8.5x11 pages for the foundation album I'm doing for a friend.

February
2005 Album (12x12) - 4
2006 Album (12x12) - 1
Spencer's Album (12x12) - 1
School Album (8.5x11) - 1
Other* - 2
Total layouts in February: 9 in 5 albums
*The "other" was a page in my work album and several pages completed in an October mini album.

Practicing Baseball

Matt and Spencer (and myself for a few minutes) practiced baseball in the yard last weekend. Spencer was supposed to be having his skill evaluation this past week but it ended up being cancelled. We got him this net thing for Christmas and it was the first time we'd tried it out (now that the weather is more pleasant).

Grey's Anatomy

Since I was on the topic of TV, I'll go ahead and talk about my other favorite show - Grey's Anatomy. I didn't begin watching this one in the beginning, but got hooked on the post-Super Bowl episode from last year. I've been watching ever since (sorry, Crossing Jordan - had to dump you for this one).

The recent 3-episode saga was pretty cool. In real life, Grey would've been so dead, but it's TV, I suppose. I'm not sure I was loving the whole concept of her hanging out with the dead people - but overall, it was good and I'm glad she didn't die (kind of predictable considering she is the title character and all).

I'm slightly embarrassed to admit that I also check out the Grey Matter blog after each week's episode.

Good Bye AJ

I absolutely love, adore, worship American Idol. It's one of my all-time favorite shows and during this time of year, it pretty much consumes my evenings (three nights a week...pretty big commitment).

The first week of eliminations was uneventful and last night began OK. But I was shocked and saddened to see one of my favorite guys get the boot...especially when there was another guy I would've much rather seen go.

So, in honor of the fun and very talented AJ, here are a few snapshots off the Idol website.