A lovely scrappy weekend

I have my computer back, a new monitor, and a promise that it is fixed. That would be wonderful! So this weekend I am ditching most housework to enjoy a long overdue scrappy date with my dear pc. Just darling daughter and I home this weekend so it's pretty quiet around here. A nice refreshing weekend it's been!

Lori I thank you for the compliment! I think so highly of you so it's really means a lot coming from you!

Joy, I took it to Best Buy where I had a service plan. That is the first time I've used it and it was a literal nightmare. I've bought nearly all of my computers there and have always recommended them in the past. The Geek Squad is awful! I know very little about computers and am probably smarter then the average kid working on the squad, which is really SAD. I hope I never have to deal with them again. I will definately be shopping MAC next computer. My old laptop I take to a small local computer store for work and I have ALWAYS been happy with their service. I hope you find someone like them where you live!

With my computer back, I have the other part of my vaca pics to share. Here's pics from Agate Beach and the Sealion Caves. (click on images for them to appear larger)





The kids spent hours on vacation combing the beach for agates. They each came home with a hand full. And the Sealion Caves were pretty cool! I had a pretty bad cold the entire trip. I was told I was so lucky I could not smell when we went down into the caves. There were hundreds and hundreds of sealions there. And as fantastic as it was to see, the kids were complaining of the odor. lol!

Darling daughter had her first track meet last week and she placed in the top three in all the events she participated in. How cool is that!?! Go McKena!!!

And yesterday I completed a couple of layouts. Here's what I did. TFL!





National Scrapbooking Day is next weekend. At {we are} storytellers.com we've started early. If you're a fan, run over there this weekend and enjoy this BIG SALE!



I'm going to be adding another section to my blog soon which I hope my friends will find useful. I recently start using Photoshop Elements 7.0 and have quickly learned that there are not that many tutorials on the program. I plan to post some of the tips and tricks I am learning here on the blog. Let me know if you would like to learn how to do something in the program and I will do my best to post about that topic a how-to.

Okay... I'm off to scrap again. Thanks for stopping in and I hope you all have a wonderful weekend!!!

Happy Earth Day...

I did a layout for it. :)



And it was featured on the Gallery Standouts Blog today. Kind of cool!

Today my darling daughter has her first track meet. She is doing a sprint, hurdles, and the running long jump. I hope she does well. Even more importantly, I hope she has lots of fun!

Today is grey and overcast. The past several days have been so pretty and warm that it makes me antsy for summer. I am looking forward to having the summer off. I am looking forward to having extra time to tackle all those crafty ideas swimming around in my head. I am looking forward to spending more time at home with the kids. I think I have 38 work days left... not that I'm counting. ;)

I only worked a half day and now I'm on my way to Portland to pick up my computer once again. And no, they didn't do a thing to it. But don't get me started. I'm going to make them turn it on and run it in front of me this evening before I leave the store. So wish me luck in dealing with them once again, please. I think I might need it.

Tulip Festival

Yep. Yesterday when we drove to Portland to drop off the computer we saw a sign stating that the tulip festival was in progress. We didn't incorporate that in the plans yesterday but did go today after lunch. It was great as usual. The weather was really great today. I love going to the festival and viewing all the beautiful variations of tulips. SO PRETTY! I also bought some hanging baskets for the porches from a vendor there. And on the way home we stopped by a nursery and picked up a few more plants and flowers to put in the pots. That is sure to get me out of my funk I've been in lately.



We worked a lot today in the yard. We brought out the patio furniture, mowed part of the lawn... some was still a little too wet to mow. And we trimmed and planted some shrubs and flowers. Dear son worked more in the garden so that we could hopefully plant it in the next day or two. It was really nice. I love to play outside.

And with that, have a good night all. I hope your weekend was awesome. Have a great week!

The weekend

Yay! It's the weekend. And it is supposed to be a very bright and warm one too in my neck of the woods. We need a little sunshine here. :)

We've been working putting in a garden. We had one for years but living in the forest it didn't grow as well as I had hoped so it seemed silly to continue putting that much time and effort in for little result. So we let it go years ago. So about three or four years ago we cleared some of our land and planted grass so that we would have a "lawn" for the kids to run and play in. Much improvement.Now back to the garden- with room from the clearing we decided to give a garden another try on another area of our property because really, everyone in the family loved gardening. So that's what we've been up to lately. We staked it off and have been skinning the topsoil and fencing it in. (Gotta keep the rabbits and deer out.) This weekend or early next week it should be planted. :)

Today I am running my computer back to Best Buy. I decided to take it to another Best Buy rather than the squad that "fixed it" last time. This had been really frustrating to me. I'm hoping to have much better results this time. So again I have limited means on the internet and scrapping until I get my baby back from the shop. Please bear with me!

Yesterday was a fun day at work because I got a new Mac! I had a dinosaur of a computer to work on there and it was dying a slow painful death let me tell you... lol! So they ordered me a brand new mini and I got it yesterday in the afternoon. I'll get to set it up next week and maybe (just maybe) doing so will pull me over to the Mac side. Hahaha. Really- I'm not due for a new computer but in another year or two I will give both pc and mac a good look before buying. Are you a Mac or a PC?

I made a hybrid banner for spring. Hung it in the living room in the window where the sun sets. Later I went to take pics to show and realize it was not photographing very well. The light from the window was throwing colors off. So when I show you my latest project, please know that it looks much cleaner and sharper in real life. The walls in my livingroom are tan and the banner is yellow but its hard to tell with the pics.



Last night, my son had his first date. It was so sweet! I did get to drive them to and pick them up from the movies but didn't have a way to sneak a pic without being a totally embarrassing mother- so I'll have to get creative when it comes time to doing a layout. And I must be doing something right, because I watched him and thought how he was such a gentleman. He picked her up at the door, met her dad, opened the car door for her... you get the idea and I was really proud of him.

I'm still feeling kind of cruddy. I'm on day 6 of a 10 prescription. Here's hoping some fresh air and some bright sun will do me good this weekened. I hope you all are well and planning to enjoy your weekend too. Thanks for checking in on me!

I so wanna cry...

I've been sick since spring break and finally went to the doctor. I have bronchitis, sinus infection and reactive airway or some darn thing. I was given three presciptions and hope to on the mend soon. Maybe I can even move back to sleeping in the bed again soon. For two weeks I've been sleeping upright in an overstuffed chair we have. It's so hard to sleep with a hacking cough and a draining nose.

I can't update my vaca pics because today my computer crapped out on my again. Please excuse the language. I just had it in the shop last month and was terribly unhappy with the service. Today my monitor kept going black. I called and they want me to drop it off again and maybe they will take another look at it. When they looked at it last month they replaced one part and did a full (destructive) system restore and I have spent endless hours getting things installed again and fixed... it makes me sick that they may do the same thing if I take it back. In the meantime I have no access to my pictures or recent layouts or works in progess. Tears of frustration and disgust with Best Buy here!

And since I'm on a rant- for a year I've had trouble with my mail service, some of which I've posted about here. While we were on vacation the mail lady put a letter in my box stating that she again mis-delivered mail. I went in to the post office (while sick)to file another complaint and the postmaster didn't want to even take my complaint much less do anything about it again. She actually said she didn't want to "babysit" her employees which is what's neccessary to fix this problem. GRRRrrrrrrrrr! I spent the next few days calling and filling complaints at the US Postal service and Consumer Affairs. I'll update when I hear back from someone.

So, there you have my sad little update. Thanks for hanging in there with me if you made it thus far. Goodnight all and I will update again in a few days if I have new news or regain access to my pictures and stuff.

Vacation - post one

We are back. As much fun as vacations are, its always nice to return home.

Last Saturday darling daughter and I went to a crop. It was great fun.

Monday we packed for our trip on Wednesday. I had a icky cough and chest cold going on. I was hoping it would be gone by the time we headed out.

I made a scrappy project that darling daughter is wearing here. If you are interested, check out this tutorial to show you how to make your own.



My dear hubby returned from work a day early so we headed off down the Oregon Coast on Tuesday instead. It was rainy and cold but as Washingtonians, we are used to that and packed accordingly. The view from the hotel was lovely!



The next morning I woke even worse for the wear. So we stopped and got some meds before heading into Newport to visit these places.



And the next day we went to the Oregon Coast Aquarium. It was WONDERFUL!



I'll leave off today on that note as I'm still not feeling well. I'll be back in the next few days to post about the rest of our trip. Hope you are all well and having a fantastic weekend!