Here I am....

Is anyone else? lol

Let's see where we last left off in the life of Colleen:)I did that 80s thing (Which is a rarity for me!) and I had recapped the week before. So I guess we will jump into this past week...

Last week....nothing that I can recall being anything overly exciting. Work was work, home was home. Did laundry on Tues with J and V. I did help J set up his computer one day after work too. OH I know what was exciting last week...SNOW!

On Friday we had more snow:)It was more than we had been expecting so I had Ben get up and take me to work in the truck even though he was off that day. Here is some snow photos:
This would be my car covered in the morning when we were going to leave:


It was so pretty before it got dirty!

Saturday...I don't think we did much of anything really. I know I spent the day organizing my music for my ipod so I could clear off some old videos and stuff and clean it up. That took most of the day and I watched Friends while I did it. I am in the middle of season 7 now:)

Sunday...We had a birthday party/brunch for R, Ben's birthday buddy:) R is our friends son and he was turning 3! We went to restuarant in New Brunswick for brunch to celebrate his birthday. Since I had not wanted to go anywhere the day before, we had to run out and pick up Ryan's gift before brunch, and we proceeded to wrap in on the bed of the truck before we left the parking lot too!


We got R a leapster thing-I think he will like it. He apparently has a lot of game system type things and he is good with them but didn't have this one which is good b/c its portable and it can grow with him with different games and such. Here is a pic of the birthday buddies and one of me with R

(ignore my funny looking face/eyes!)

Its hard to see it in this photo but in one of the cards R got was a a bunch of money, and he took it out of the card and did NOT want to give it to mom or dad to hold. He wanted to keep it and it went on for a few minutes because he just didn't want to give it up-it was quite amusing!


On the way to the car Ben started to teach R about throwing snowballs-he was quite good too! Here he is tossing one at his dad:

And we can't leave out mom:


After the party we went home. I ran back out to Micheals and Target to pick up a few things and made it home in time to pick up some dinner and watch a movie before the Oscars. Wasn't really blown away with the oscars this year but I hadn't seen a lot of the movies and that makes a difference how "into" it I get.

Monday...Ben's Birthday!!! On monday we putzed around the house all morning, I picked up some lunch and then in the afternoon we left to drive to Delaware and visit some good friends of ours. Our friend was only home for a few days (he is a truck driver) and so we were lucky they were willing and able to fit us into his limited time home. We hadn't gotten together since we saw them in October and we missed them! We had a good time with them. The baby has gotten so big but they are both just as cute as always! They took us out to Longhorn for a tasty steak dinner for our birthdays (since mine is next week(since we wouldn't be driving down again just for my birthday!). After dinner we hung out at their house for a few but it was already late and not only did the little ones need to get to bed so did the adults (since they both had to work on Tuesday!)We left and drove home and were home not too late-no real traffic on a monday night!lol Here are some photos of us with the girls, and Ben's birthday dessert.











Tuesday...Today we didn't do much of anything. We are both enjoying the fact that we just don't HAVE to do anything since its our week off! I was going to start on our back room again but since I was going out around 4pm to meet V and J for tuesday night laundry night I didn't really want to get into a project. So ben stayed home enjoying his day, he played his game on the xbox and I went to meet the others for laundry. It was a little busier tonight than last week but it wasn't so bad that we had to wait for anything. After laundry I took J home and helped him to set up his DSL. He is quite happy to be online. After I finished that I came home and jumped online to try and catch up as best I can since I don't know how well I will do the rest of the week!

No idea what the rest of the week has in store for us. I hope to get some more progress done on our back room and make sure all my photos are uploaded and organized so I am up to date before I start working on some projects. I want to get started on my Washington DC book (from our trip at the end of October!!!) but I know some new digital stuff is coming out on Saturday and so I might wait til then to get really into it because I know there are a few things I want to purchase for myself on saturday b/c they are so pretty. Have I said I LOVE digital? (I also figured out some ways to save things from other areas to re-use so its a good digital scrapping week!) Ben goes back to work on saturday and sunday we will be going to the shore to see MIL for the day.I still have to figure out where and when we are going out with friends for our birthday dinner. Hopefully we can find a day in the next two weeks to go.I am waiting to see when we can get together to decide where I want Ben to take me for my birthday. We will see!!

Its Idol time...and I am going to go watch that now. So far I was a little disappointed in the guys I liked from last week but I think they did well enough to be around another week....at least that is what I hope!

I am the 80s!

I don't normally fill out the many memes I see posted around, mainly b/c they take a lot of time and often say similiar things. But every now and again I find one that seems different and fun or speaks to me and so I did. Enjoy:)

My Younger Years

1. How old were you in 1980?
4

2. How old were you in 1989?
13

3. Were you a Toys 'R' Us kid?
Yes I was. I circled things I liked in the catalog and my grandmother took me there for my birthday every year to pick out some toys!

4. Did you watch Transformers?
Occassionally but I did play with Transformers:)

5. Did you see E.T. on the big screen?
Honestly dont remember but I think I did.

6. Did you own a Lite Brite?
Didn't everyone? It was so fun to make your own and lite up the room in the dark!

7. Who is your favorite Golden Girl?
Sophia

8. When someone says "Who you gonna call?" you think?
Ghostbusters!

9. What was your favorite toy?
wow-fave toy...I am not sure.I had a lot of barbies. And I loved my purple "boom box"

10. Did you have a Pogo Ball?
I dont remember if we had one but I know I had played with one

11. Did you listen to New Kids on the Block?
Actually I did not. Except their christmas album and that was more b/c I love christmas songs and we were singing one in chorus at school. however I did have a few friends who LOVED them and I almost went to a concert once b/c a girl I knew said she could get tickets and wanted someone to go but it didn't work out.

12. What New Kid did you have a crush on?
none

13. Did you play M.A.S.H?
Of course.

14. Did you watch The Care Bears?
Not really.

15. Did you have jelly bracelets?
More than I can recall! And jelly shoes too!

18. Did you ever own a slap bracelet?
Yepper!

19. The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles?
Breakfast Club.

20. Did you have a crazy hair style?
My hair was always super straight but I did do the bangs poof thing. Not as high as some other girls I knew but it was there...

21. What was your first bike?
It was maroon. I didnt get a bike until I knew how to ride it. It had a white seat.

22. Name one thing you still own from your childhood?
scrapbook with some old photos and probably some odds and ends

23. Did you have a Cabbage Patch Kid?
2 of them, one girl regular named Kelly and one boy premie named micheal owen

25. Rainbow Brite or Strawberry Shortcake?
Rainbow Brite

26. Did you watch Miami Vice?
No

28. Did you own a Trapper Keeper?
who didn't?

29. Atari or Nintendo?
Nintendo although i think my parents had an atari too but i was too little to play

30. Did you play Pac-Man?
Of course

31. Which was better: Jem and The Holograms or Barbie and The Rockers?
I might loved my barbies but JEM and the Holograms rocked the house

32. He-Man or She-Ra?
She-ra of course!

33. What movie scared you the most?
dont remember

34. Did you try to dance like Michael Jackson?
I did the moonwalk-or at least I tried

35. What is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear "flux capacitor"?
Back to the Future

36. What other colors did Pepsi come in?
?

37. Roger Rabbit or Howard The Duck?
Roger Rabbit

38. Do you know what the Ninja Rap is?
YEs! Turtles on the half shell, they're on a mission ...

40. Do you know why people cringe when they hear the word BUCKNER?
no

41. Can you name the family members from the National Lampoon's Vacation movies?
Clark Griswold and the kids and wife and dead grandma

42. Did you have pump sneakers?
No - bobos

43. Did you own HYPER COLOR shirts?
No but i knew someone with one

44. Did you watch Smurfs?
Of course. I played "smurfs" too - sucks there was only ever one female.

Creme Brulee and the weekend

Hello All!
So this weekend seemed to have come and gone faster than most. The good thing is the next week at work will have some definate downtime which makes the fast weekend more bearable! Actually this week at work will be interesting I hope. Mon and Tuesday it will be very low key and I will primarily be working on a few reports and odds and ends I want to do to prepare for the students NEXT week when they are back. We don't normally get days without students but since we are having a training on Wed-Fri they didn't have the students come in for the week. Next weekend though we will get a three day weekend which will be nice I am sure after three days of training.

In other news...I went to my grandfather's house on saturday. I hadn't really been down there to just hang out since before christmas. We had gone down for some holidays and birthdays and stuff but this was the first weekend I just went down to hang out. We spent some time teaching him how to use the cell phone I got him at christmas and by the time I left he seemed to feel more comfortable with it. We changed the ringtone for when it rings to some song they had on the phone and he got a kick out of that and we set up his voicemail even though he will probably not use it he wanted to have it all set up. I told him I was going to randomly call and leave him a voicemail just so he had to practice checking it! We also went over text messaging and he got a kick out of that. He thought it could be interesting to try and to learn b/c we talked about how sometimes you are in low signal area and calls won't go through but you can get a text out or even in natural disasters and stuff-you just never know so I thought it important for him to know how to read and to send a text message. He did get a kick out it and said he might try it sometime and I told him I will send him some messages too. I hope he tries it. He said if he remembered he would try sending ben a happy birthday message on his birthday. we will see!

The other big thing we did (besides my laundry which was small this week so it didnt' take me long!) was my grandfather made me some Creme Brulee! I had gotten him a kit for his birthday and he really seemed to like it and had tried it out a few times. I got him these kits too where he just had to add the creme and he liked that but said he will definately try to make it from scratch too. He made the custard part ahead of time b/c he had told me he was going to make it for me and so in the afternoon we went to the kitchen and turned it into Creme Brulee! Here are some photos:

The custard before we started:


Adding the sugar on top to be carmalized:





Using the torch to carmalize the sugar on top:






With the sugar carmalized (partway)


My grandfather and his new toy *er* Torch:)


And the eaten product! It was tasty!


Today wasn't anything too crazy. I got some things done that I needed to do and even got some help which was awesome. I almost forgot....I did want to share a photo of what was on the T-shirt I was wearing today - I think its quite entertaining! (It was a "incentive" for maknig a certain amount of CM sales in Nov!)


Anyway....that about brings my weekend up to date. Hope everyone else had a great weekend and I will be back soon!!

Ta ta for now!

Superbowl Fun

Hello everyone! So how was everyone's weekend? Mine was pretty good. It was hectic and productive but it was also nice. Let's see how it went....

Saturday
Ben worked. I was originally going to go to south jersey to see my grandfather but I called him on friday to say I would come next week instead b/c I just had too much to do, including take my christmas decorations (and tree) down! I told him I wanted to do it before the Superbowl and he told me I was cutting it close. LOL So I stayed home, took down all the christmas stuff and packed it up, took tree out, found out my table where the tree was now has a crack in it but I don't know what I am going to do about that. The table is probably at least 60 years old! I also cleaned up around the house, got laundry together and ran the roomba:) And during it all I was finally able to catch up on all my tv. There wasn't as much as normal b/c of the strike but I still got caught up! By the time ben came home I was exhausted and just relaxed the rest of the night.

Sunday
Got up and finished getting things together for laundry and left to do laundry. I called Jay to see how the apt was and he called me back while at the laundrymat. He hadn't eaten lunch and neither had I and since the laundrymat was near the new apt I went over to get him and we had lunch next to the laundrymat so he could see how far it was and get a brief orientation to it. It was more crowded when we got back there than when I left so we didn't look around as much.

Funny store: When I went to Jay's to pick him, I pulled around back to park in his parking spot (since he doesn't drive) and went to the back door. Rang the bell, nothing. Knocked, nothing. Knocked again, nothing and I knew he was home and I told him I was only 5min away! So I called him and said "I am at your back door". He repies with "I am waiting out front for you!" So he must have come out the front as my car was pulling around back. Anyway...

So we went to lunch, then stopped in laundrymat so I could move my wash to dryer and show him the machines a little bit. Then we stopped by the grocery store so I could get some fruit for later and he could pick up some bottled water and got him back to his apt before his sister got there to take him out shopping.

I went back to the laundrymat and thankfully only had 10min left on my dryers so I didn't have to spend too much time there-wahoo! After I got my laundry out and folded, I went to the mall to my fave kitchen store to get some stuff for our fondue for later, then to Wegmans for a few things I forget earlier, then to Benegins for take out wings for the game, then 7-11 because in all my travels I forgot to get some soda and THEN I went home. And I made it there by 4pm which was a lot better than I had expected. Had I not had lunch with Jay, I would have spent all my time waiting at the laundrymat and not done ANY shopping til after so in the bigger picture it really did save me some time.

When I got home I basically left all the bags on the floor in the living room except the things that needed to go in the fridge b/c I was so tired and figured we would need them for the game anyway! Eventually throughout the evening everything got put away.

I chilled out and relaxed and waited for the Superbowl to start. We did a box pool at work so I got that ready. Ben won first quarter, valeda won half time and third quarter and johnny from work won final score along with the GIANTS! What a great game. I was quite impressed.

Here is a photo of our dessert fondue mix (and what I ran around for most of the afternoon!)



As far as the Superbowl Commercials go, they were still not up to par with a few years ago (Bring back the Bud frogs!) but there were a few that stood out. I liked the Bud Wine and Cheese one, The Doritoes Rat one and the horses one best. THe Justin Timberlake one was ok and I did like the lizard one.

After the game we watched House (great episode!) and then went to sleep.

Today-nothing exciting really. Work was work. I spent most of the night procrastinating on my photo projects and trying to update my video driver but having issues so I will tackle that afain tomorrow!

For now-it is past my bedtime and I need my sleep!!
Hope all is well-ta ta for now!!!

Photo Preservation Projects 2008

So this post is a little more photo and scrapbooking centered. Creative Memories just came out with this new "pitch" and while a lot of times I don't get too into the angles they come up with for selling stuff (I just like to use and share with others who might enjoy the same thing!), I do like this new one. I am also excited about some of the new products that will be out soon-which of course is going to make all my book decisions even harder. The best I think for me will be the new 8x8 page prints and picfolio albums to slide in the page prints. I make all my storybooks 8x8 b/c I love the size and now that I can make page prints into picfolio books too, I can use that size for other stuff!

ANYWAY, since I like this new pitch, I wanted to post about it and set up my own goals for it. Here is what I got from my friend and posted on my CM website:

Do you have any UFOs? I do! "The Courage to Count Your Un-Finished Objects"

Do you have any UFOs? I’m not referring to Unidentified Flying Objects with little green men...I mean UnFinished Objects...specifically, unfinished albums. You know... the albums that just need that last bit of journaling, a title page or maybe a closing page, or just missing a picture or two. Or maybe you have jumped around from year to year and season to season! You may consider all those beautiful albums lined up on your bookshelf as finished but are they really?

As I've started asking some of my clients what UFOs they have, a few shared with me that they have no UFOs at all...at least that's what they originally thought. After further inspection of their bookcases, they realized that there were several albums in need of journaling, page protectors or just a title page. And I'm right there as well! So I'll share my album making statistics and confess at the same time...

I began celebrating my memories in scrapbook style albums in the spring of 2004, shortly after my wedding. Over the last few years, I've made various types of albums and while I have completed some, I still have a bunch that are UFOs! In addition, I know there are BUNCHES of albums I would like to make but have not started.

A Work in Progress (WIP) is an album that is waiting for an event to occur before it can be completed. For example, if you have a School Days album for your child and your child is still in school, you can't truly finish that album until your child graduates. That's a Work in Progress.

An UnFinished Object is totally different. Many of my UFOs just need some journaling, a title page, or a few more photos that I need to find or reprint. A few of those albums need lots of journaling and there are several pages yet to complete. I really should finish my first year of marriage book before I hit my 5th anniversary!

So here's a challenge for you. Take a look at all of your albums and see which ones are truly FINISHED, WIPs or UFOs. If you come across a totally empty album, write down the color and at some point, you can decide what memories to celebrate in that particular album.

So let’s FOCUS on the UFOs – it’s a WONDERFUL feeling to cross one off your list. It will be so satisfying to complete these important and meaningful albums so that we and others can look through them and enjoy! I know you can do it – we can do it together!

I invite you to share your memory celebration statistics with me. Download an Album Log you can use at http://www.mycmsite.com/sites/colleenf/my-files

I'll be working on my UFOs this year and I'd love to have you join me!

*****************************************************************************
So, this really made me try and start to think about what projects I have started and which ones I want to start! I may occassionally post my list here as I make progress or add to it.

Traditional Scrapbooks I started but need to finish aka UFOs:
First year of Marriage (may 2004 to Dec 2005)-Pink Album 12x12
Year in Review 2006-Purple Album 12x12
Travel Highlights-Destinations Album 12x12
Me and Tara book-"Smile" Album
AI Concert Album-7x7 purple
Wedding Cards Album-12x12 White Album

Albums I want to start:
Washington DC-Storybook 8x8
2007 Year in Review-Picfolio Max or 12x12 Storybook
2008 Year in Review (I want to mkae this as the year progresses)-Picfolio Max
Canisius College Years-12x12 storybook or Picfolio Max
Circle K-size undecided yet
Us and our "kids" (A book with all photos of ben and I with various little ones in our lives)-possibly do this in a Picfolio Milestones album since it holds 4x6 photos and I can make "pretty" pics in my storybook creator plus softwar AND mix in 4x6 prints I already have.

Blank Albums waiting for a project to get started:
Traditional Albums
Red Love 12x12 Album
Beige flower 12x12 Album
Green flowers Album (probably for planning book)

Picfolio Albums
Red Picfolio Album
Brown Picfolio Max Album-12x12
Blue Picfolio Max Album-12x12
Pink Picfolio Minutes Album
Brown Picfolio Minutes Album
Black Picfolio Minutes Album
Other various Picfolio albums

Various Photo Albums (4x6 slide in pages)

I also want to go through my supplies one of these days and sort through what I really like to use and what I don't think I will use. I want to pack up some of the "extras" I have and give them to my niece. One of these days, right?

I guess that is all for now! I will post a regular update later but there really isn't too much new and exciting going on here. Just getting ready for the superbowl tomorrow!

ta ta for now!!!