JustMeAgain

What have I done this weekend?

 

A little of everything!

* I have been spending fun times with family and friends.  Good food. Fun games.

* My friend Crysaly came over for Thanksgiving dinner and joined us at grandma's house. She even came back on Friday night for left overs. She is a brave soul, considering that having all the Hammons in one room can be a little overwhelming. In a good way, of course. :D  

* Had a lot of fun catching up with my sister in law and talking about baby names. Her baby boy is due next April. I'm so excited about becoming an aunt!  I'm trying to  convince her to name her baby Troy! Of course she'll get to have the last word and considering the many options she has, I'm just not sure I'll get my wish.  Whatever name she chooses, though, I'm sure it will be perfect.

* I have been just doing the same stuff I normally do on weekends, a ton of laundry and dishes, of course! 

* I did a little bit of gardening today and a quick visit with my friend Moling. Always so lovely to see her.

* I was lucky to visit with my friend Beth on Thursday morning while we got our morning Starbucks drinks and did a little impromptu photoshoot. Today we spent some girlie time doing pedicures. Good times, as always.

* Went to the movies twice this weekend. Between Friday and Saturday, we saw Australia and Four Christmases. I think we've had enough movies for a while.  For a long while. I loved Australia. The photography and cinematography were amazing and Nicole Kidman was as good as ever (she was magnificent, in fact.) Hugh Jackman was total eye candy and the little boy, whose name I can't remember at the moment, was just darling. I was very sad and dissapointed to read some of the bad reviews this film received on line because I honestly thought it was one of the best movies of the year, if not the best. Four Christmases was pretty entertaining.

* I'm still working on my Christmas cards tonight.

* I have been trying to get the holiday decorations ready this weekend, but I'm so not done yet.

* We went hunting for a tree, but did not find one we liked in the local tree farms. I think we'll have to go back to the Santa Cruz mountains like we normally do each year.  Probably next weekend.

* We took the pups for their annual shots today at Petco. So fun when Mickey got recognized as the Hip Hop Hot Dog. I guess he is somewhat of a little local celebrity.  

* Have been thinking a lot about how grateful I am for all the love in my life. All the family and friends that keep my soul feeling happy, enriched and lucky every day.  

* Have been also doing some thinking about life in general and about goals and about some things I want to accomplish next year.

* Have been stressing over Christmas holiday shopping since I have done absolutely none of it.

* Have talked to my family in Mexico and day-dreamed about visiting them next year.  

* After having had such a busy last couple of months, I can say I highly enjoyed having the time off from work.  The best part is that there is still one more day left!  Woo hoo!  

And I managed to keep this entry so long, that even though I started it on Saturday night, I am actually finishing on Sunday morning...sooo, happy Sunday my friends!
 

Happy Thanksgiving Day

 

* May your day be filled with a million beautiful moments to create new memories to keep in your heart forever.

* May you get to fill your belly with a lot of good food and your soul with much love and peace.

* May you spend a lot of time with the people you love.

* May everything be beautiful and MAGICAL today and always.

Happy Thanksgiving day my friends.

Holiday cards...it's that time again!

One of my favorite things about the holidays is the exchange of Christmas cards.  I love sending out cards and I love receiving them.  That is probably up there in my top three favorite things about the holidays! 

This weekend I received the first greeting card of the season.  This is from my friend Tiffany with a picture of her gorgeous daughter, Lily.  Her beautiful smile is contagious, isn't it? I just loved looking at it.

I can't wait to get started with my cards now.  I have already put aside all the materials, I only need to print the photos and get to work!  I hope to have some time to work on them next weekend...we'll see how far I get. 

Have you started your cards yet? How about any holiday crafts?  If you have, and have blogged about it, let me know!

I wish I could say I have done any of those magical crafty things that creative people come up with, but since I haven't, I'll share a few of the beautiful and inspiring projects I have seen lately.  

* My friend Liz recently shared an entry on how to make a beautiful Advent Wreath. I  would love to try making one of these!  In fact, it's on my to-do list!   

* And how about this gorgeous pumpkin decor by Geoorgana Hall?  I know, Autumn is almost over, but they are so darn cute!?  I think I will save this one for next year for sure.

* And of course, the always fun projects shared by Ali Edwards. I've been saving up the Advent Boxes project since last year...hopefully this will be the year I'll get to make them! 

And since I am sharing links tonight, how about a wonderful interview of my friend Linda Woods byLiz Ness at the Illustrating Stories blog. Check  it out!

Together

I have not put together a page for our family scrapbooks in months!  This year has gone so fast that I feel like time just keeps moving along with such a full force that there is hardly any time left for anything.  However, whenever possible, I've tried to make a little time for creative projects.  I have been making some ATCs (artist trading cards), entries for a few Circle Journals for some friends and the on-going Disney album project that is only about 25% complete by now.  This morning, however, I actually put together a few pages with pictures from our Thanksgiving holiday in 2006.  I guess I'll do a little sharing of some of the stuff I have been making in the past few months and the pages I worked on this morning.  Be ready for a bit of a picture overload!  :D

Happy Saturday everyone! 

ETA: I just realized that some of those 6 x 6 prints thaI used in these layouts had been posted here two years ago, just in digital format before printing them. So funny!  It's taken me this long to finally put those pictures in albums!  Good thing I only had a hand full of pictures from that holiday!  They all fit in only four layouts. No wonder I hardly ever add pages to the scrapbooks! I take too many darn pictures, even when I hardly do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Keeping childhood in our hearts.

My dad always said "keep a little bit of childhood under your arm, and the world will be yours." 

I couldn't agree more.

Keeping the magic of childhood well rooted in our hearts is such an important part of life.  I hope my daughter will always remember this as she goes on into every stage of life.

Following up on my latest post, thank you for sharing your memories of Thanksgiving.

Here are a few links I want to share from blogs that posted really awesome entries on the topics of Thanksging and holiday cheer.

Cheryl Wray. Check out her "Thankful (but random) Tuesday" post. I loved reading about her holiday tradition, her plans for this year and her favorite Thanksgiving food!

Alette DeVries. I loved her photographs about Sinterklaas! Talk about holiday magic in The Netherlands!  

K. Barteski. Totally awesome post about Timely Secrets for the holidays!

Happy Wednesday!

Wednesday is here whether we are ready or not.

This week has been, again, incredibly work-intense. Last night I did not make it home until 9 pm. I certainly hope to make it home at a better time tonight!

I am so looking forward to next week...four days off and Thanksgiving holiday! What can be better than that?  I love Thanksgiving. It is one of my all time favorite holidays.  What part about Thanksgiving do you love most? Share a few of your family traditions in the comment section.  I would love to read about you. And if you have blogged about it, let me know so I can share a link to your blog in my next entry.

What I love most about Thanksgiving is the family time, the focus on the action of being grateful and of course, the food!  I also love knowing that the following few days after that day, I get to stay home and not think too much about work...unless, of course, I happen to bring work home!  And for the record, I am really not complaining, I love working witha purpose, and I know what I do for aliving has a very good purpose for many people who need it. I am truly grateful for being able to participate in the process of helping disabled individuals in the process of obtaining their disability benefits.  That part is a true blessing! 

So, share what you love about Thanksgiving, I can't wait to read about it.

Tuesday already?

Well, we might as well just make the best of it!  Happy Tuesday my friends!   

One more thing to be thankful for today

The amazing Penelope Gan, an active volunteer from Scrap.n.crop, one of the largest on-line scrapbook stores in Asia, contacted me a few weeks ago to let me know she was doing a feature with my Etsy prints in the Scrap.n.crop's community project section where they feature various artists.  I was, of course, extremely grateful and VERYexcited!  Tonight I get to share the link to the feature entry in their blog!  Thank you so much Penny! 

Colorful gratefulness

* So thankful for Sundays and the inspiring church sermons that my pastor shares! I am just getting ready to go this morning so I'll keep this post short.

* Grateful about the amazing colors in my yard this weekend!  All my roses are in amazing FULL BLOOM! 

* Very appreciative of all the multicolor fun things I come across with in almost every corner of my life.

* Hugely grateful for the magic of life.

I love November!  Even though I always love to be mindful of the act of thanksgiving (not only in this particular month), there is always an underlying invitation to show gratitude in November and what's not to love?

Have a wonderful, colorful, and filled with magic SUNDAY!

Hello weekend!

This past week was certainly a bit nutty and it felt like a little beam of light that just flew right by. 

* Work was happily insanely busy (time at the office does go much faster the busier I am so I don't mind it too much when I have this kind of intense type of week.)

* We had an insanely cute, and hard-working, temp assistant a few days of the week, and we even commuted together to work one day. Gotta love commuter lanes!  I made it to work that day in only 40 minutes instead of an hour!  

* Had crazy lunch and dinner schedules this week.  Lunch at 4:00 pm two days, and dinner at 8 pm at least three nights.  Forgot all about breakfast half the week.  That part not so good. 

* One evening this week, I had a little contest with the kid (my lovely daughter whose PE teacher recently called "a natural born athlete") to see which one of us would accomplish more jumping jacks in the least amount of time. She jumped in sets of 100, 10 times in about a minute or less each set, for a total of one thousand jumping jacks.  She finished all these sets with absolutely NO SIGNS of fatigue or exhaustion.  She wasn't even breathing heavy! Her mother, on the other hand, took about five minutes to finish the first set of 100 and two minutes for each of the following two sets.  She took long breaks before attempting the next few sets. She only completed a total of 300 jumping jacks and was so totally out of breath and tired that it was ridiculously funny.  Note to self: Do not compete against a "natural born athlete" unless you are trying to look out of your mind.  Even when such athlete is only 11.   No, she will have no mercy on you and the next day you will be so sore that you will actually walk silly all day long and will not be able to walk on high heels. No matter how cute they are! 

* In all seriousness, this little competition was a lot of crazy fun with the kid and it was a great reminder to the fact that I need to get in shape again!

* I have been dedicating at least a half an hour each early morning reading and discussing the Love Dare book with the hubby. I am loving this book, for the most part.  It's been funny that we have found some things we really like about it and a few we don't like as much.  It's been a reminder of just how cool it is that even though we are so different, we still have some things in common!  When we first met, that was one of the things I loved about our relationship. We both knew we were so very different, but we wanted to be the living example of just how opposites truly attract and can still live happily ever after.  Yes, there is much work involved in making that happen.  I think we had forgotten about that part. The good thing about this book is that it has brought forth many good reminders. Several of the dares have just made us aware of manyaspects of our personalities that we initially loved about each other, only to find out later how much they were irritating us after we got married.  So funny how that works. I have been making notes and when we are all finished with the 40 days, I hope to find the time to put some of my thoughts together in some kind of a journal to give to him.  Maybe in time for Christmas, or our wedding anniversary at the end of December.  We shall see.  Oh, and in case you are wondering, so far the one thing we did not like as much about the book is its underlying tendency of  giving men and women certain characteristics, as if all women and all men were the same kind of cookie.  We keep noticing that we just never "fit" those roles intended for men, and the ones for women. For example, I am the one who works outside of the house more hours (the book keeps referring to the husband as the one with the long work hours outside the home); the hubby is the one who cooks and does all the food shopping and meal planning/preparing (the book always assumes it is the wife who does all these chores.)  Whenever we come across examples such as these, we just look at each other and laugh, we just know we are different than most couples and we are okay with that. 

* Friday at 6:30 a.m. I had my monthly hair appointment with my beloved friend and hair stylist Debi.  I have been having these kind of wickedly crazy early appointments for the past 11 years and I love them because that way I can get my hair done without interrupting my day!  I still get to be to work on time even after having sat for 2 hours at the hair salon!  This time it was even more exciting than usual!  Debi graciously agreed to add one more person to the schedule! My friend Crys joined me in the quest to becoming an almost natural blond!  And here are a few pictures of our 6:30 a.m. insanely fun adventure!  A few of the before and after process for good measure. Doesn't she look gorgeous as a blond?