Fall-To Layout #142

Funny story from yesterday: when I got off at my Metro stop, I thought I saw someone that I knew from undergrad. I wanted to make sure it was him before I said anything, so I walked up next to him to confirm. Yep, it was him. "Are you ___?" "Uh, yeah. Oh, HEY!! How are you??" Oh, good. I guess I haven't changed either. Even though the DC area is flooded with people, sometimes I think it's a small world after all (cue Disney World music...).

Reverting back to office mode wasn't too hard today. I need to have my head in the game because I'm doing house related things on Thursday (meeting with mortgage guy in the morning and then doing the house inspection in the afternoon) and then heading out again on Friday for work. There is no room in the next 2 weeks to play space cadet.

Here's my take on Fall-To Layout #142. I was thinking of sending a card to my friend Page, and since her favorite color is yellow, I figured that was a good place to start. The house paper caught my eye and reminded me of her because she's going to be a new home owner this summer as well. Meg gave me some flower stickers for my birthday this year, so I added it for some dimension. Crafty supplies = the gift that keeps on giving.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Vintage Photo
Paper: American Crafts- Abode, Die Cuts with a View- Mango Frost
Stamps: Studio G
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 4
Stickers: Sandylion- Flower Power
Pearl: Queen & Co.- Sunflower Yellow
White Gel Pen: Inkssentials

Home Hunting Update + St. Simons Island Vacation Recap

Hello out there! Yep, I made it back from vacation safely. A beach trip with friends was just what I needed. I'll get to the recap and pictures in a little bit, but I wanted to update y'all on the offer that I put on the townhouse last week. When Robyn and I were driving across the bridge to St. Simons Island (Meg hopped into the car with Page so she wouldn't have to drive by herself), the real estate agent called to let me know that the seller accepted the offer! YAY! Next stop: a home inspection. I thought the timing of the call with the bridge was very metaphorical...you know, like crossing over to a new life and all that jazz. Perhaps I'll be able to meet the "leaving the nest" New Year's Resolution after all.

The four of us stayed at Page's family's condo, and the place was so nice. Everyone got their own bed, and the property had easy access to the pool and the beach. The weather was sunny the whole time.

The vacation pretty much consisted of going to the beach/pool, watching movies and eating...a lot.

Food report: There was a lot of chocolate (we consumed 4 bags of M&Ms: peanut butter, pretzel, almond, and peanut), cookies (oh, Oreos, how I've missed you), and seafood consumed these past few days. During 3 out of 4 dinners, I had some sort of crab cake. Errr...calories don't count on vacation, right?

Movie report: We gave the local Red Box a workout during this trip. We watched The Green Hornet (fell asleep during it), The King's Speech (hadn't seen it before, good movie), Tangled (saw it in the theater, loved it), and Despicable Me (saw it on the airplane before, meh) on DVD. We also ventured to the movie theater yesterday and saw Thor, which was pretty good.

Book report: While I was at the beach, I read and finished the book Commencement. It was one of the books that I bought for $1 at a used book sale. I thought it was funny how the book paralleled the beach trip in that the book was about 4 friends that met in college and the four of us (Robyn, Page, Meg, and me) become friends in college as well. I enjoyed the book and would recommend it, even though I skipped over some sections because they made me feel uncomfortable.

Funny story from the trip: Meg (and Robyn?) brought two shells back to the condo after a trip to the beach. We thought that they were uninhabited, but were seriously mistaken when we saw the shells crawling away a few hours later. Screaming ensued. Crabs were returned to the ocean.

Here are some pictures from the trip.Off to unpack, get some laundry done, and accept the fact that I will have to go to the office tomorrow instead of soaking up some sun on the beach. Hope you all had a lovely Memorial Day! :)

Off to the beach!

"Tina, you'll be on real vacation, right? Like, not checking your work email?" - my boss, on our 1-on-1 call today.

Yep, no work email or work conference calls for the next couple of days! This is monumental! I haven't had a vacation like this in 3 years.

P.S. On the home hunting front, I put in an offer for the townhome that I saw yesterday. Send good vibes this way, please! :)

A New Adventure Into Geekdom

My Windows XP operating system was on its last leg today. UGH. Oh well. Time to learn something new. I could a) wait until my cousin was home to see if he could lend me an XP CD or b) I could install Ubuntu per my sister's recommendation. It's a Linux-based operating system. I was a little unsure about it, but my sister sings its praises and since I just need a computer that does basic things (print, edit photos, play music, word process, etc.), I wasn't tied to Windows. But, I did want a computer that worked. Within an hour, I got Ubuntu on my computer and at least Firefox on it is working...otherwise I wouldn't be able to type up this blog post. Who knows, I might be a convert.

In other news, I went with my realtor this afternoon to check out the townhome I've been eyeing for the past week. It was so lovely that I asked my parents to come check it out this evening and they were fans too. Dad's quite the skeptical person, so for him to give his approval right off the bat was a huge relief! I'm currently resisting the urge to tell the realtor tonight that I want to put in an offer. This is a house, not a pair of earrings that I want to buy impulsively. I'll sleep on it tonight and then contact the realtor in the morning. Holy cow.

I was asked to make a bridal congratulations card for a girl at the office. I guess it's more of a multi-purpose card because she's getting married, she's going to medical school, AND she's leaving the organization in about a week. I guess "Congratulations" sums up what we want to say, right? I wish I knew her better because then I could incorporate her wedding colors into the card. I guess my go-to cheerful color scheme of red, green and yellow will have to do. I was really stumped as to how to make the card less flat, but not too bulky. Fortunately, I had some buttons from Michaels sitting on my desk. With a few glue dots, I liked the card a whole lot more! Eek, please excuse the picture quality. The card was too big to fit in my light box.

Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird, Warm Red, Warm Green, Yellow Ochre
Paper: American Crafts- Abode, A La Carte
Stamps: Fiskars- Sentiments, Fiskars- Petals From Scratch
Buttons: Bucket White, Red from Michaels
White Gel Pen: Inkssentials

Fall-To Layout #141

::cell phone alarm goes off:: So. Freakin'. Annoying. How dare it go off when I told it to!

Wait, what day is it? Is it Wednesday? Is it time for vacation?

Crap. No. Yesterday was Sunday, which makes today Monday. ::whine::

Does that ever happen to you? Surely, I can't be the only person.

Ok, enough with the gloom and doom.

Good thing that happened today: my hello card was selected as a "Hoolala" on the Wee Memories blog for Challenge #56.

Funny thing that happened today: I was in a meeting where the HR director was attending too. She sits next to me and looks at my nails: "Tina, whoa, yellow??" Mmmyeah, well, I guess the yellow is tough to miss. And then we started talking about crackle nail polish.

Happy thing that I'm looking forward tomorrow: my realtor and I are checking out a townhouse tomorrow around lunchtime. This will be the first property I've seen with her, and I hope it's as nice in person as it is in the pictures. ::fingers crossed::

Onto today's card. It's probably the fastest one I've done in a while. I already had the sketch (Fall-To Layout #141) and color scheme that I wanted to use (red, yellow and green...yep, a repeat from yesterday. Hey, I stick with the winners). During my shopping excursion yesterday, I stopped by A.C. Moore. I saw in the insert that they were having a 50% off sale on their clear stamps. Gimme gimme! I limited myself to 1 set, which was a mix of circular frames and sentiments. I used one of the sentiments for today's card. Ta da!Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird
Paper: American Crafts- Abode
Stamp: Inkadinkado- Round Frames
Punch: Fiskars Apron Lace border punch
Brad: American Crafts, Large Brads- Cherry
Flowers: Prima
White Gel Pen: Inkssentials

CPS #219

The amazing thing about technology is that it helps you be a part of events when you can't be there in person. I had intentions of going to my sister's graduation today, but with the 3 hour drive there and the 3 hour drive back and having to be in the office tomorrow, it would have been a really tiring day. Fortunately, the graduation ceremony was being broadcasted live on the internet, so I was able to enjoy the ceremony in my jammies.

The commencement speaker, Erik Weihenmayer, talked about facing adversity and going into the storms the life throws at us, instead of running away from them. I especially liked the analogy that he used to compare great people to alchemists.

You know, they can take the lead that life piles on top of them and they'll figure out a way to transform it into gold.

With an alchemist, they don't just do the traditional things that you hear about. They don't just deal well with adversity, they don't avoid it, they don't even overcome it as you hear so often.

These alchemists have figured out how to do something radically different. They've figured out how to seize hold of that storm of adversity that seems to swirl around us to harness its energy and use that energy to propel themselves forward to places that they never would have gone to in any other way.

With an alchemist you can throw them in the midst of a fierce competitive, uncertain environment, you can strip away their resources, you can throw roadblocks in front of them, and they'll still find a way to win. And I'd argue that they don't find a way to win despite adversity, they find a way to win because of it. I think if we want to learn, if we want to grow, if we want to strengthen great teams around us, if we want to innovate, if we want to create a whole new paradigm that the world follows, I think the way we harness those challenges in our lives is our greatest advantage.

Imagine while the world is digging in its heels and focused on surviving, you're out there using the energy behind this momentous occasion to drive forward, to make ground, to make an impact.

That's a pretty good quote, right? He also joked in the beginning of the ceremony that it seemed like people were more interested in his seeing eye dog than him. It is difficult to miss the dog, as he was a giant German shepherd.

I was earlier out in the crowd and somebody said, "That's the most amazing dog I've ever seen, man's best friend, what a noble creature." Then I was walking up the aisle and I think I heard him say, "Oh, by the way, that's our speaker, he climbed Mount Everest blind."

I'm used to taking a back seat to the dog.

While I was listening to the names being called out, I tackled CPS #219. I wanted to finally break into my DCWV Nana's Kitchen stack that I bought a few weeks ago. I loved the green paper, so I started with that and built the card from there. I decided to pair the green with yellow and red (yes, like a traffic light). I didn't have an oval die to match the sketch, but I did have a Nestabilities die that was a similar shape and hadn't gotten a ton of use recently. I love the bright colors and cheerfulness of the card and the extra dimension and sparkle of the gems.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Warm Green, Blackbird, Warm Red, Yellow Ochre.
Stamps: Fiskars- Friendship Garden (flowers), Fiskars- Petals From Scratch (sentiment)
Punch: We R Memory Keepers Corner Chomper, Fiskars Threading Waters border punch
Paper: Die Cuts with a View- Mango Frost, Nana's Kitchen
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Labels 4
Other: Black Sharpie Ultra Fine Point marker

At Target today, I bought a new bottle of nail polish on a whim and did my nails after dinner tonight. Yep, they are yellow. Yep, I'm going to wear them to work tomorrow. Neener neener. Sally Hansen in Lightening. Can you tell that I'm ready for summer?

Laura's Wedding + Reception

I have to say that driving a newer car is a lot more fun than an older car. I don't get to have that opportunity very often. Dad let me borrow his car today and I felt like I was zooming on the highway. Today, I headed to Baltimore for my friend Laura's wedding (::wave::), which was, of course, totally fabulous...in true Laura style. I parked the car at the hotel where the reception was going to be held and then took a shuttle bus to the church. I actually sat next to the mother of the groom on the bus, but didn't realize it until later on. I finally introduced myself to her when I entered the church. "Hi, I'm Tina (I paused to see if she'd recognize me...and realized that she didn't. I rushed to find some sort of context) ummm, I made some of the thank you cards?" "OHHHHH, hiiii!" Hey, if my claim to fame is the cards that I make, I'm down with that.

After the ceremony, we all headed back to the hotel for the cocktail hour and reception. The hotel was right along the Inner Harbor, so the view was so pretty. The appetizers were amazing: beef wrapped in bacon (who can go wrong with bacon?), cheese + crackers, quesadillas, and my favorite...some sort of crab cake ball. I ate like 3 or 4. Mmmyeah, I have no shame whatsoever. We kept an eye on the server lady that was passing them around and waved her over several times so that we could take another one. I also had an apple martini, yum! For dinner, I picked the chicken platter. I wonder if the chicken was purposely served in the shape of a heart. How appropriate for wedding reception food. By the time the slice of wedding cake arrived at the end of the night, I only took a few bites because I had absolutely no room...yeah, like you thought that was possible!
Random thing that almost happened: there was a lady at the wedding that had on the same dress that I WAS going to wear. How funny would that have been?!

Congratulations, Laura and Nate! The wedding was awesome! Thank you for letting me be a part of your special day! :D