Phone Upgrade!

Phone upgrade: I'm not one to care too much of the latest and greatest of anything, whether it be technology or crafty things. However, I have been wanting an iPhone for quite a while now. Ever since my cousin got one, I've been eyeing it. Now that I have some extra money in my pocket from my promotion, I decided to treat myself to get one of my own. I've been using my cousin's old iPhone as an iTouch since he's upgraded his 3GS phone to the 4S version, so I'm already quite used to it. I decided on the iPhone 4 because it was cheaper and I wasn't willing to spend $200 on a phone, but still, even though this isn't the latest and greatest, I'm really happy with this upgrade. Can you believe it? This is my first smartphone.

Yep, I feel like I'm officially cool. :)

Nail polish: Glitter nail polish is only cool until you have to take it off. It takes forever. Tink-Her-Bell came off tonight because it was chipping off in big pieces. I kinda followed this BellaSugar guide to removing glitter nail polish.

Holiday Card 2011 Scrapbook Page

TV: I was watching The Today Show this morning while eating breakfast, and they were doing a segment about how to make some extra money this year. One of the tips the lady suggested was "Start an online store." She listed off Ebay, Amazon, and Etsy as ideas. Sure, you can start an online store, but maintaining it? That takes almost as much time as a full time job with all the creating, picture taking, picture editing, listing, etc. you have to do. And with the supplies you have to buy and fees you have to pay, it takes a while before you actually make money from your store. They should have elaborated on that part as not to give people the wrong impression. Also, just because you make stuff doesn't necessarily mean it'll sell.

Good customer service: Bed, Bath, & Beyond rocks. The air mattress that I bought in October developed a leak and they let me return it and give me my money back. Yay!

Shopping: I was able to score some really good deals on Christmas crafty items today from Michaels, Marshalls, and TJMaxx. Aside from crafty items, I was also successful in buying some new work out clothes. This'll help me not have to do workout clothes laundry so frequently.

Blockbuster: On my way home from my morning shopping spree, I went to Blockbuster to see what their pre-viewed movie selection was like. As I approached the store, I saw big "We're Moving!" signs. I got really excited because I thought that meant that I could find some good deals on DVDs. Mmmyeahno. That was not the case. Some previewed movies were $10 or $12. I was not impressed. I picked out a bunch that I wanted (6 DVDs and 1 Wii game) and went up to the desk to see if they'd give me a deal, but alas, they didn't, so I left them at the counter and went home. I thought that they'd be more desperate to get rid of the merchandise. Maybe I'll have to go back closer to the closing date in February.

Scrapbook page: As I did for the Christmas cards I received in 2010 and the birthday cards I received in 2011, I decided to keep the cards that I received this past holiday season and make a scrapbook envelope page of them.

Page Specs:
Ink: Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Broken China. StazOn in Jet Black
Paper: American Crafts- Merrymint
Stamp: Inkadinkado- Snowflakes (snowflakes), The Paper Company Studio- Christmas Expressions (sentiment)
Punch: EK Success Postage Stamp border punch
Brad: Recollections- Silver Circles
Stickers: American Crafts Dear Lizzy Christmas Glitter Chipboard Thickers in Sparkling, Martha Stewart adhesive borders

New Year's Resolutions

(Warning: Super long blog post. Scroll down for the card that I made today.)

Happy New Year, folks! Hope everyone had a good time last night celebrating! I invited Robyn, Maria, and Beth over to hang out with me and Julie. I ordered pizza and Julie helped me arrange some cheese/cracker and veggie platters. I was happy that I was able to use some of the serving platters that I got at the housewarming party that my family attended. After watching Crazy, Stupid, Love (which was pretty good. I haven't decided if I want to get a copy of the DVD for myself), we played a few hours of Just Dance 2, which was super fun (and funny). RJ was very excited to make new friends. He went so far as to sleep with Robyn on the couch last night.

One semi-embarrassing thing from last night was that I didn't have a corkscrew to open that Robyn nicely brought over. "Tina! You went to WNL. How can you not have a corkscrew?!" I also didn't have a bottle opener, but Julie, being the resourceful person that she is used a flathead screwdriver to open the sparkling apple cider. Whew, saved by the engineer. Fortunately, I found an extra corkscrew at my parents' house earlier tonight.
Book: I finished up Nicholas Sparks's book Best of Me a few days ago. I thought it was good, but wasn't fully awesome.

Nail polish: This glitter nail polish is not working out for me. Many of the tips have chipped off and my right pinky finger is half gone. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Spin class: I started 2012 on a good note by going to an hour spin class taught by Janice. She had advertised over the past few weeks that she was going to give a lottery ticket to anyone that came to class. True to her word, she gave each person a scratch off lottery ticket. I didn't win anything in my first ticket, but because the class wasn't full, some people got to try again. I ended up winning $2 on the second ticket. :)

Time for New Year's Resolutions. Let's revisit the ones that I posed last year and see how I did.

2011 Resolutions

• Repeats from last year: Keep up with my blog and Etsy shop every day through promotion, posting, or listing. Track my financial spending better by keeping receipts and entering data into MS Excel. I definitely didn't give it my all in accomplishing this resolution. I feel like I was better at keeping up with the Etsy shop in the first half of the year than in the second.
  
• Reach 625 Etsy sales by January 1, 2012. I'm currently at 485 sales. Check.
  
• Complete a 8K in March 2011 without walking. I did this race in 2008, and my time was 54:22. Check.
  
• Complete a 10K in April 2011 without walking. I also did this race in 2008, and my time was 75:55. It was a huge challenge for me because I hadn't trained very well for this race, and my knee was in a lot of pain during the last mile of the race. I want to do better this year. Check.
  
• Continue to go to spin class, run more, and incorporate weigh lifting into workouts more often. Spin class: check. Run more: I did better in the first 6 months of the year. Weight training: meh, not so much. I did get a resistance band so that definitely helped some.
  
• Leave the nest. This is going to be tough as I have never lived by myself before. I guess it's time to grow up a little. BIG CHECK. ::victory dance::
  
• Teach a class on origami. Hopefully this'll help me with my fear of public speaking. Didn't even attempt.
  
• Increase my professional contributions at work and work towards a promotion. BIG CHECK. ::victory dance::
  

Other highlights from the year...

• I did one more race than I thought I was going to. (Kensington 8K)
• I supported my friends at some big events. Jenny: wedding reception. Laura: wedding. Meg: Marine Corps Marathon. Robyn: Light the Night walk.
  
• I took a vacation to the beach with my friends.
• I adopted a kitty.

2012 Resolutions to complete by January 1, 2013.

• Read 20 books that I've never read before.
• Complete all the races that I did in 2011 and beat my times.
  - St. Patrick's Day 8K: 52:43. Meg and I already registered, so that's a good first step. Now it's just a matter of finding my running legs.
  - Capitol Hill Classic 10K: 66:14
  - Kensington 8K: 51:35
• Use 25 brand new recipes that do not use a crock pot and is not a casserole. 5 of those dishes have to include some sort of seafood.
• Reach 785 sales on Etsy.
• Lose at least 10 pounds by April 30 and spend the rest of the year maintaining that weight.
  

Card: Here's a picture of all the crafty things that I received for Christmas. Of course, it would make sense that I would use these goodies for a card, right? I have been reluctant to get the Tim Holtz ink blending tool and using makeup sponges instead. I found that the makeup sponges, whatever material they are made of is not as durable as the foam used for the blending tool. The makeup sponges would break apart pretty quickly and the little bits would get all over my project, creating dots of ink where I didn't want them. This was a good investment. Sometimes you can't substitute for the real thing.
Card Specs:
Ink: Colorbox chalk ink in Blackbird. Tim Holtz Distress Ink in Broken China.
Stamps: Studio G (sentiment, balloon), Martha Stewart- Patterns
Punch: Fiskars Large Cloud punch
Embossing Folder: Cuttlebug (Swiss Dots)
Pearl: Queen & Co.- Pearl
Other: Staedtler Triplus Fineliner, embroidery floss

Song of the day: "Higher and Higher"- Jackie Wilson. Heard it at spin class this morning and it put me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

In closing...
It's been fun taking some time today to reflect on what all happened in 2011. It also makes me feel truly blessed and thankful for what I have in my life. It's going to be tough to top 2011 (seeing as it's not like I can get another promotion or buy another house), but I will have a fabulous time trying to outdo it.

Hello, Cool Phone

Shopping: Hooray for a four day weekend! I went to spin class this morning and felt great leaving. Afterwards, Julie and I went to the Verizon kiosk at the mall. I've been wanting an iPhone for a while, but didn't feel comfortable shelling out the $30 data plan until I got my promotion. Since my promotion is effective January 1st, I figured this would be a good time to get it. I was debating on getting a Silhouette cutting machine as a post-promotion treat to myself, but I've survived this long without it, I'll survive a while longer. I debated between the iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S, and the differences between the two wasn't enough to convince me to spend an extra $100 for the newest version. I was impressed that the iPhone shipped a few hours after I left the kiosk. Hooray for good customer service. Buh-bye, clunky old phone. Hello, future cool phone.

Nails: After a few days of bare nails, I decided to try on another new nail polish color. This one is a glitter polish, and while I foresee it being a pain to take off in a few days, the color is pretty so it'll be worth the hassle. This color is Ulta in Tink-Her-Bell (after 3 coats). It came in an Ulta Quake Nail Polish duo set with a black crackle polish. In the future, I might put this over a base coat of another color.

RJ's Twin

From what I heard from people at the office, today's movie selection was Backdraft. I didn't see it though because I was enjoying my teleworking day in my pajamas.

When I went to my parents' house last night, I picked up 2 boxes of my old stuff and went through them today. I found this black and white stuffed cat that I got as a present back in college. I was very amused because it looked very similar to RJ.

I was going to do a scrapbook page of all my movie stubs from this year, but that project will have to wait until later. Julie came over today, and we made oatmeal chocolate chip cookies to bring to the neighbors. And now we're being lazy, watching episodes of Big Bang Theory.

Whoo hoo, four day weekend ahead!

The end.

Movies at the Office, Day #2

Cookie success: I gave away all the cookies that I baked yesterday! I brought some to the office and left with an empty container and then the few extra that I had at home, I took them to my parents' house. This afternoon, I was camped out in one of the offices that has a large window in it. I had the door closed because I was on a conference call, but I saw the big boss walk by. He paused at the window, pointed at me and then the cookie, as if to ask me if I brought the cookies in. I finally got what he was trying to say while trying to also pay attention to the conference call and nodded my head. He then gave me a "sooo good" expression. Ha ha. Spreading cheer with cookies, yep, that's what I do.

At the office: Today's movie selection at the office was Fletch. I came into the movie about a third into it because I was on a conference call with my boss. I had no idea what was going on half the time, but at least being in the conference room with my co-workers was better than sitting in my office. I decided to move my teleworking day to tomorrow since the office is closed on Friday, my usual teleworking day. Of course, I'll be missing the last movie day at the office, but I'll enjoy working at home in my pajamas instead.

I also heard from a co-worker about some baby news, and I'm SO excited for her! :) I was so ready to blab the news to my boss so that she would be in the know, but I stopped myself as this is not my news to tell.

Shopping: Armed with some coupons, Julie and I went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and Michaels tonight. My goal at BBB was to get a scale to put in my bathroom (used my 20% off coupon!). I'm not really too happy with myself with recent bouts of overeating, and I figured a way to get my weight situation under control is to hold myself accountable with the numbers on the scale because it's an objective way of tracking my progress. Losing 10 pounds will put me back in the "Healthy" BMI category, so that's my current goal. According to FitSugar, the best time to weigh yourself is in the morning, so the official weigh in will be tomorrow.

At Michaels, we got some frames and mats to use on some prints that I got from trafalgarssquare. I also got an EK Success postage stamp border punch on clearance. They already had Valentine's Day stuff out. Craziness.

Card: I had a piece of green cardstock that I had left over from when I was die cutting leaves for this card. I figured that since the piece was big enough, I could use the negative in another card, as not to waste any crafty supplies. I die cut another set of leaves and covered the space with some American Crafts patterned paper to add some visual interest. Then I used the other spool of washi tape that I got for Christmas. I thought about stamping a sentiment, but then I thought some Thicker alphabet stickers would give the card a little more pop and texture.

Card Specs:
Paper: American Crafts- City Park
Die: Spellbinders Nestabilities Foliage
Stickers: American Crafts Fabric Thickers in Patchwork
Washi Tape: from Container Store
White Gel Pen: Uni-Ball Signo Broad White Gel Pen

Movies at the Office, Day #1

Today started off kinda rough because I got into bed last night around 11 PM to start Nicholas Sparks' latest book Best of Me, and I got so into it that I didn't put it down until 12:30 AM. This resulted in me struggling to get out of bed. Fortunately, because of the casual dress code this week, I didn't really have to put so much thought into what I was wearing. As long as it was clean, I was outta there. I went so far as to forgo the make up because, really, who's gonna care?

The a/v technology in the conference room was a little wonky today. By popular vote, we decided to watch the movie Fletch, but for some reason, the music in the movie was working but the dialogue track wasn't. We tried the Inglorious Bastards DVD to see if the same thing would happen, and it did. Finally, we tried my Toy Story 3 DVD (ha ha, I win) and you could hear enough dialogue to figure out what was going on. The IT guy came into fix the a/v settings so I'm hoping that it'll all be good for tomorrow's movie watching session.

I promised to bake some cookies to bring into the office tomorrow, so I baked some peanut butter chocolate chip cookies. There was no space for the last cookie, but I plopped it on the cookie sheet anyway. It turned into a square cookie. Guess which ones are going to my family tomorrow? Heh.