Black Belt Living

Hamster on a Wheel

Yeah, that's me today.

It's the end of the month and that means scrap deadlines. Dang it, if work doesn't get in the way of my scrapping, even if I now spend my work days scrapping. Does that make sense? On Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays (and some days in between), I spend my days scrapping for IP. The rest of the week, I'm scrapping for Coordinates, Memory Makers, CK or whomever else wants my services. Toss in the $20,000 scrapping contest at Scrapbooks.com (my layouts are here) and this week has been just NUTS. Today I had to finish up my contest entry and both start and finish a complete album for Memory Makers.

Yep, that's me, the hamster. I have been so busy that I forgot to eat. Now that's saying something, especially during Diet Week One. The worst part is that other than my contest entry, I can't even share because it's all assignment work!

Oh well, life in the big city. The work I did today should pay for summer camp for Shannon. Yikes, when did Camp get so freaking expensive? Yowza.

On The Beach

I've been working on gettting rid of those pounds for a while now. Since October 04, I'm down about 40lbs. Since January, I'm down about 12, but I've slowed again and I get complacent as usual.

This weekend we were at my parents' house and Mom said that my uncle and his wife (the uncle was quite a bit overweight to start) had really changed their lives through the South Beach Diet plan. They lost gobs of weight in the last six months, turned around their high cholestrol and early signs of diabetes, and felt great. My uncle used to have a huge gut, and now it's gone, all thanks to South Beach. So anyways, Mom and Dad have decided to give it a go and Andy and I decided to join them...you know, shake things up a bit, try something new.

The first two weeks of SB are basically no-carb. This is done to basically detox your body from it's dependence on sugar and bad fats. After the first two weeks, carbs are re-introduced in moderation and you basically resort to a low fat, higher lean protein, lowER carb way of eating. I know that I feel better when I'm not eating a bunch of sugar and carbs, so I was looking forward to it.

Today is the beginning of day three. I had been expecting to be crabbier and feeling generally more icky than I do. I've had somewhat of a dull headache for the last day or so, but that's managable. I dont' think I've been a raving lunatic or huge bitch, but others might disagree!

Eating the SB way, especially Phase One, is a challenge. I really have to shop and think about what I'm going to eat and cook for my family and how. Dinners haven't been a problem, but neither Andy nor I are breakfast eaters and that's a big change for us. I also have to think about packing lunches to take to the office. It's not hard, it's just different and it makes me think about how and what I'm eating. That's most likely a good thing. Mindless eating is NOT a good thing.

Anyhow, so far the Beach is a sunny place. I'm down nearly 3lbs. since Sunday night. That makes me smile. Chili with sharp cheddar cheese on top and a spinach salad for dinner tonight. Yum. That's hardly a sacrifice!

If you have any experience with SBD, please leave me a comment ~ I'd love to hear about it!

Thanks!

Happy Monday!

Ah, it's a chilly and frosty Monday morning and Shannon and I are planning on spending it in our jammies working on scrapbooking projects! She's off of school today, so I switched my work days in the office and will be home today.

It's pushing up on the end of the month again, so that means I have to get my design team assignments together. That's pretty much done. Then there's a silly contest that I decided to enter and that deadline is Friday. Those layouts are almost done ~ two down, one to go and that will be finished this morning! Then there's two projects for Memory Makers that I haven't even really started yet (with the exception of getting some background information) and I need to really get cranking on those.

No taekwondo this week because testing was last Saturday (everybody was looking good! Shannon busted her boards on the first try, so all of that worry was for nothing!). The school is always closed for several days after testing so that our instructor can catch a little break, tidy up the place, and get some things in order. That's what I need to do here at home as well. Anyhow, it's good to get a little break just to buy myself some serious scrapping time!

I have too many projects going on. Although my kitchen is painted, I still need to order fabric and make the window treatments, paint and recover the chairs, and hang everything back on the wall. I've been hesitant to hang things because I really want crown moulding put in the kitchen. I'll be meeting with the contractor today to talk about our master bath and I'm hoping that I can talk him into putting some moulding up in the kitchen as well. I hope, I hope! I really don't want to do that job, although I will if I have to. The chairs need to get done (and I want to do them!), but it's been too cold to paint them in the garage (I use spray primer, so I can't do it indoors!). Tomorrow it's supposed to get into the 50's again. I sure hope so. It feels like winter. It actually HAILED here a few times this past weekend. The weather is just bizarre.

Well, that's the morning update. Typical weekend....busy, ate too much, didn't accomplish enough.

Hope you had a good weekend too!

Testing Day!

Shannon and I are testing for our senior red belts in Taekwondo this morning. Wish us luck!

Update later........

Scrapbooking Shopping List

One of the perks of my new job, and of being on the Imagination Project Design Team, is access to free scrapping stuff. I pretty much can have at all of the IP paper and embellishments that I want, whenever I want. It really rocks. Between IP, my other design teams, and freebies coming in from publishers, I rarely buy any supplies anymore and that's really great. I've gotten sooooo spoiled.

Yesterday I got a challenging assignment that requires me to use some specific product lines and put together an album. I want to use a spiral bound, 8X8 album with a chipboard cover. Something like this from 7Gypsies:

So I headed off to my closest scrapbook store yesterday. I'm sure that some of you reading this will know the store that I'm talking about. I'm not going to mention it by name because I really do want to support the place.

I am really strapped for time lately, so I had to hustle into that store while S was at taekwondo class. I get there with an actual LIST of things I need to buy, including an album, several types of patterned paper and adhesive refills. They had NOTHING! Not ONE item on my list. Now it's not like what I was looking for isn't hard to find. This stuff is really popular right now, like fresh Basic Grey paper. Not Basic Grey's original release, which is all they had. New KI Memories, not two sheets of KI Christmas paper from two years ago. It was awful. I was prepared to spend some money and ended up buying NOTHING.

Are we supposed to be surprised that more and more stores are going out of business? Scrapbook Central is gone. In the months before it's demise, there was nothing there that I was interested in buying, so I was forced to shop elsewhere. Now here's another one. I know what I need and I am more than willing to buy it there, but again, I'm going to end up taking my business elsewhere and you know where that's going to be ~ a bigger store. It's a longer drive, but I know that they'll have what I need.

I don't know, it's frustrating. I want to support the local retailers, but if I can't get the basic supplies that I need, I'm going to end up shopping somewhere else.

What a Difference One Day Can Make

Yesterday, the official first day of Spring:

Today, the first official FULL day of Spring:

Subliminal Messages

For years we've been hearing that there are these embedded messages in everything that we see, especially television. Life is so full of visuals these days. I heard the other day that our eyes pick up more advertising messages in a week than people got in an entire year back in the 50's. That's a lot of marketing.

So I'm taking a break yesterday from the chaos that's my life on a daily basis to watch the train wreck that's been the NCAA basketball tournament. March Madness, indeed! I threw caution to the wind this year and picked a bunch of random underdogs. I just might win. Every year I try to be logical with my picks and find myself going down in flames. So why not be bold and daring this year, right? Anyhow, I'm watching Pittsburgh lose to Bradley and this is what's on the screen for the entire game:

So? Are they trying to tell us something here?

On some unrelated notes....baby Addison Reece Rohlfs arrived on St. Patrick's Day. Mom and baby are doing great and I've got some photos HERE.

I tried on a pair of jeans today that I bought waaaay back in December at Old Navy. They were way too small back then, but they were also marked down to about $3 and I figured that I was motivated to lose weight anyways, so what did I have to lose but a few bucks? I'm wearing them today ~ that's a milestone, especially since I've had a bad week diet and exercise wise. Bad, bad, bad. I like Mondays because they're a new start for me. Monday is my weigh in day.

Well, gotta run. The life of a working girl.....

Hall of Fame ~ the Aftermath

I didn't enter the Creating Keepsakes Hall of Fame contest this year. I've entered the last three years but lack of motivation, a bad attitute, lack of good photographs, or whatever kept me from pulling it together this year. That's okay.

The winners were called yesterday. Call day is always dreadful. Unless you get that call, which obviously, I never have, you wait and wait and wait. You sit by your phone praying or begging it to ring. If it does and it's not "the call", it takes 20 minutes for your heart to stop racing. All day you go through this torture and as time passes, the negativity sets in. You're sad, you might get angry, you swear that you're not going to put yourself through all of this crappola again (but knowing that chances are, you probably will!).

Last year I got a consolation prize ~ an honorable mention. In the grand scheme of things, that's darned great given that there are always hundreds and hundreds of entries. I heard that this year there were 960 entries ~ that's just incredible! I can't even imagine the amount of time put into creating all of these entries. Imagine 9600 different layouts!

Soon after the names were announced last year, one of our fellow HMmers and her husband created a private message board especially for us. Little did I ever imagine that nearly fifty of us bridesmaids would be looking back today, a year later, and saying that they were grateful that they didn't win last year, but I know that we all feel that way. I just can't begin to explain what good friends we've all become and how much we all support and care about each other. Yesterday was a prime example.

Yesterday was the day where our bonds were put to the test, as 22 of the 45 regular participants on our board waited to hear if they would "get the call". Change is always hard and one thing I do know for sure is that we don't want our little private clubhouse to change. And it was hard, from what we can deduce, eight out of the 22 that entered are winners. There might be more, the calls may or may not be done, we're not really sure. It's hard to be so excited for the winners while your heart is breaking for those who didn't get called. We've all been there and we all know what that feels like. I think everybody held it together and because we all genuinely care about each other, everything is going to be fine!

So anyways, if you're reading this and you got a call ~ a huge CONGRATULATIONS to you! I can't wait to find out who you are and see all of your beautiful work! If you entered and didn't get a call yesterday, just know that you should be proud of all of the hard work and energy that you invested and you never know if something better might develop from the fact that you didn't win this year. I know that can certainly be true.

In other news.....

Yesterday was Ginger's last day at the office and I snapped some pics of her after our group lunch. She looks so cute! I'm really going to miss her at the office, that's for sure. It just won't be the same without her there for a few weeks, but I can't wait to meet that baby ~ whatever her name turns out to be!

Seeing the Light

The rain has cleared and the taxes are mailed! I'm seeing the light....

I don't have to endure that for another 364 days ~ yay!

Now, let's just hope that there won't be any bugs in April.

Speaking of lights, I'm off to Lowe's this afternoon to buy new outside lighting for our house. We have needed new lights for the longest time. I think these are the ones I'm going to get:

That's about it for today. I know, boring, but taxes are boring. Now I can smile for the rest of the day and let our CPA do the work.

The Three Ts

it's That Time of year again...Time for The Three Ts. The Three Ts are

TAXES

TERMITES

TORRENTIAL RAIN

I really hate the month of April. Over the last few years, between tax season, a flooded basement, and swarms of termites in my house, I can credit late March and April with kicking off panic attacks. I know it's irrational, but hey, I own it.

Today, it's March 13th. I have GOT to get my tax information to the CPA. I have to. It's crunch time and my procrastination and denial about all things tax related just can't be ignorned any more. It's silly too, because I know that we'll be getting a decent chunk of money back this year ~ money that we've earmarked for remodeling. So it benefits me to get it together and send the stuff in. I just really hate doing the profit/loss for my painting business. The good thing is that this is the VERY.LAST.TIME that I'll have to do it.

Several years ago thank to shoddy workmanship on the part of our homebuilder, we were visited with annual visits of swarming termites in the first floor. When Shannon was a baby, I remember leaving for Sunday Mass and coming home to literally MILLIONS of bugs ~ a CLOUD OF BUGS ~ in my dining room and living room. That so freaked me out that I can still hardly think about it without wanting to barf. And that fateful date was April 9th, every single year until we finally got a handle on the problem and evicted those heinous critters for good. I still can't look at April without getting the willies, however. I used to have nightmares that termites would crawl up my four poster cherry bed and eat me while I slept. Ewwwww!

Then there's the rain, the torrential spring rains that never stop. That's already started. In the past two days, we've had nearly three inches of rain, along with big thunderstorms, with more to come later today. Our basement doesn't normally get water, but one year one of the window drains was cloggged, forcing water into the window and flooding the basement. That was TERRIBLE! I swear, there's not much worse than flooding and what we had was nothing compared to people who have real flooding problems. Our backyard is a total swamp, with loads of standing water. This year we will have french drains installed, I swear! Getting a ditch dug and filled with gravel and pipes just isn't my idea of a fun way to spend two thousand bucks.

So yeah, I hate April. It's only March 13th, but it feels like April already. I can feel it creeping up on me, like a swarm of termittes just ready to bust loose, and I don't like it.