Yard Sale

I love the "idea" of a yard sale. I always get excited when I know I am going to get to have one then reality sets in and all the HARD work starts. Amy & Terri are having one in at Toler & Toler Ins. with the community yard sale I thought it sounded like fun and a good opportunity to get rid of a lot of stuff that is accumulating quickly. Oh my gosh it was so much work getting ready for it. And it's so muggy outside! Anyone needing anything for a boy size 0-4 years old should stop by between Amy and I we have a TON of great stuff for CHEAP!

On my way home from setting up for it I stopped by the store to make a pizza for diner and turns out I walked into a crisis. One of the girls hubby's fell and hit his head so she needed to leave to take him to the Dr. So me and my stinky self stayed to help out so the other two girls wouldn't be short handed and my feet are aching so bad right now! I got to leave around 8 so it wasn't so bad but I sure am ready for bed. Wish me luck selling my junk!

RIP Ming

I am really sad to have to say goodbye to my vibrant little kitty cat Ming. Gretchen rescued Ming from the Korner and nursed him back to health then he claimed my house as his permanent residence. I became attached to him immediately. He was such a sweet, good natured cat that will be missed greatly. I think I am calling it quits on cats because I can't seem to keep one longer than a year or two. I'm just wondering if this month can get any worse at this point? Ming was a great pet and I'm sorry to see him go.

Pool day...wish I had a pool!

It is going to be a poolicious day out but the only problem is I don't have a pool. Aghh that sucks, I know several people that have pools that wouldn't care if we swam in them including my mother in laws but it is such a pain in the behind to pack all the "stuff" you have to have along with a 16 month old and go to the pool by yourself. It's so much work that when I get there I'm exhausted and out of the mood to swim. Is that silly? I dream of the day that I have a pool in my back yard to go jump in. Every since I was little I have wanted a pool so badly. I am a fishy and would swim every day if I could but packing up to go swimming else where sucks! Jeezy I didn't know I had all that hostility towards traveling to a pool until I wrote it LOL!!!

Mat spent all day at the Dr. yesterday including traveling to see a neurologist at Adena and still NO answers. I am really getting worried. It is the strangest thing he had to use both hands to open the door knob this morning. I just don't know what else to do? They gave him some meds and said they are leaning towards it being viral, but still that doesn't make me feel any better ya know? I want some answers. He went to work today, because when you have your own business you just don't get the luxury of being able to call in sick but he can't even hold a pen so I'm not sure that he'll get a whole lot done today. He would be upset that I am blogging about him so I'll hush up now! (He is so private that he thinks blogging is silly) we don't have to agree on everything you know!

Now to my big find of the day. Celeste sent me a link to search through blogs to find ones that you are interested in reading and I found BAKERELLA I am in love with what she does.

What a productive day

This has been such a nice weekend. Asides from the fact that Mat has some super strange things going on health wise we won't go into details but let's just say his arms are so sore that he can't even open a pop bottle??? He thinks its a virus of some sort but his muscles are really weak so I am praying it's nothing serious. Other than that freaking me out I have got a lot accomplished this weekend. My house is all caught up thank goodness, I fell really behind during my "bad" week and just now bounced back! Then today we went to Wheelersburg **Home of the Jeaps** That mascot cracks me up...SO WEIRD! ----->back to my point ---> to look at some restaurant equipment mainly an ice cream machine. We ended up purchasing a huge horse trailer full of stuff. Lots of huge equipment pieces for backups along with a huge stainless steel double door freezer!!! Good buy small crappy freezers Hello commercial grade!!!!! I am so excited to get that thang hooked up. And a ICE CREAM MACHINE!!! The exact same one we have, which is wonderful so the girls will know how to use it and clean it and the ice cream will taste the same, that makes me so happy you just don't even know! It always makes me happy to make improvements to the store. With the economy being what it is right now things are tight so it's rare to get to make any "cosmetic" improvements but these new additions will definitely look and operate better. I feel that I got a good deal and I have piece of mind that we have backups in case any of our equipment goes down which is priceless to me because crap is always breaking down. New or old it doesn't matter things break all the time! Now if I could just find (make) time to weed my flower bed by the road the weeds are twice as big as my flowers aghh it's always something! Night all.

Baby J

I had the One year shoot with Jackson on Thursday and he did stupendous! I had a lot of fun. I have taken his pictures quite a few times but he is such a little man now!







We handed him this pretty blue lollipop to hold and as soon as Brandi let go he dropped it LOL,

I'm Back

I know I've already posted today but there was just so much that went on today and I have taken so many pictures! This morning I got a kept Mason and Baylee for the morning so Peyton could get judged on her cooking project at the fair *** Congrats on 1st place Peyton*** we had so much fun! Or at least I did watching the kids play. Mason is Soooo great with Rees. He never hits, pushes, yells or anything else that Rees may deserve at the time he is so wonderful and patient with him (mind you Mason is only 4, so that's a big deal) Rees was a turd today though he was really rough with Mason and didn't share well at all! But I think they had a good time too! Then in the afternoon baby Jackson came over and I took his pictures, which he did so great he was an angel! Then they came over to the house to play and Rees was much better with Jackson, he didn't even hit him or throw anything at him :o) thank goodness! I think he feels like he has to be rough and tough with the older kids but he seems to know to be easier with babies. Then aunt Abby came over and we had dinner and watched a movie! Mat cooked at the gun club tonight so I was glad Abby came over and kept us company. We had a fun filled day and Rees was more than ready for bed this evening. But here's a little re-cap of our day.

Another favorite picture

Last night before the rain hit Rees and I were outside just bummin around. Like I said last night nothing special (so I thought) we were just out and about. I had my camera as I usually do and was snapping away as Rees went from one thing to another. Then this morning when I checked my pictures out I was so happy!!! I caught and innocent moment, do you all know how hard that is??? I instantly fell in love with this picture and after a little photoshop lovin (I can't resist tweaking on pictures to make them more dramatic) I just love it. So I guess something great did come out of yesterday!

Following this nice innocent picture was Rees pulling all my flower heads off those flowers and carring them around in a cup for an hour! But anywhoo, I am getting ready to take One year pictures for baby Jackson so I'll post again later!

New recipes

I wanted to share two great recipes that I used for the 4th of July event I went too. Don't think I'm crazy for taking picture of my food LOL! I just love when people share their pics of food so you have some idea of what your making! Enjoy

Do you ever look back at your day and say what was the point? LOL, I know that sounds silly, but today was just one of those type days. I went to work did all the normal things, picked Rees up from mom's house and him abd I just piddled for hours then went to dinner at Patty and Maurice's and came home. I was just in a "mood" I guess. There were no highs and lows or big todo's or anything. I guess I'm just used to a little chaos to shake things up but not even a mad customer or a complaint to deal with.

Anyways.... I found a really neat little cooking website HERE what attracted me to the site was the recipe for Colorburst Cupcakes which I WILL be trying out. but there are so many cool little tips and cute recipes just fun stuff so if your bored or need a pick me up try out this site!

Tomorrow baby Jackson is coming over to take his One-year pictures!!! I love those shoots so I'll have some cuties to post tomorrow.

We had a a sick little man

Sunday Rees was super cuddly, he wouldn't let us putting him down he justed wanted to hang out on our laps which has never happened before. Don't get me wrong I really enjoyed it but I know something wasn't right. So Monday morning at 4 am he woke up burning hot. I took his temp and it was 102.3 so I gave him a bath along with Tylenol and put him in bed with us. After the bath he thought it was time to start the day so he was jumping around in bed and wanting to chit chat he didn't really act sick but he was burning up. He was chilling too and that was heart breaking, I hate to see that! After a couple hours we all went to sleep and then we got up at 9 and went to the Dr. I felt so silly. The doctor said I'm not sure what's wrong he acts fine. Which he was being pleasant but still not being "Rees". So the Dr. sent me home with nothing! But, throughout the day he got to feeling better and by late evening we went outside and just bummed around...obviously he was feeling better.



Then to relax after he went to bed I scrapped! I am still only up to my April pictures, I just can't believe I'm this behind. Here are a few that I did.





This is a real fish that I went and got just to do these pictures. I love how they turned out. I made a 10x20 collage and put it in his room. and at one point he caught the fish and had it in his hand outside the bowl!

Cool Finds

So I was wasting time this morning before Rees got up and ran onto some cool things that I want to share. Have you ever needed to save something from a webpage? That happens to me all the time like a neat article or just a few lines you want to keep but I really don't want to print it or save the page to my favorites (because I will never remember why I kept it in a week or two) but I found a great article HERE on screen captures. It is only good for Vista users but there are other similar gadgets that you can download for free if you use windows xp/98. It's called the Snipping Tool and it is wonderful! I just want to know why it doesn't come on the desktop it's hidden inside the programs files somewhere and I had no idea it was even on my pc! It is fabulous, flexible and a huge time saver for me! Here's a picture of the article that I saved to my pc from an article on the internet.

This is the free form option you can use the rectangular option or just capture the whole screen, then you have the option to print, save or email your selection and you can highlight, or wright things in your selection. How cool is that???

Next is a simple yet very useful thing I now cannot live without the "find" tool. Does everyone else know about this? Probably but I have never heard of it before. Just hit Ctrl+f and you will have a little bar pop up at the bottom of your screen and enter the text, word, quote you are looking for and it will take you right to it on the screen your in. I just love that!

Well, these are my 2 finds for the day just wanted to share 'em. Looks like it might be a nice day out so I think I'm going to have a picnic in the backyard with Rees today. I need to go look for a good spot before he gets up! Have a great day.

I'm feeling better today!

Sorry about the "venting" I did yesterday, things are getting better I just blogged at the wrong time of the day yesterday when everything was crashing down! I'm sure everyone can relate. I had a lazy day today I didn't do anything except some laundry but Rees and I stayed in our pj's till noon and then just wasted the rest of the day away. It was nice and I plan on doing the same thing tomorrow until 5:00, I got an email from big lots for 20% off my entire purchase from 5-8pm and I have been after this little wicker bench they have to use as a prop for kids. It's adorable and really little and they had it priced at $120????? I don't think I would pay that for a full sized wicker bench let alone a tiny version so it went on sale then I can get the extra 20% so I am super excited to go snag that up, I've been watching it for weeks! Funny how little things like that can perk you right up, of course retail therapy always makes me feel better. If anyone else would like the coupon let me know and I'll forward the email. They have a ton of cute furniture in there right now and cute rugs too. I have also been playing around on Etsy today. If you haven't been there you need to go! It is like an online treasure trove. Like being in an upscale flea market of shabby chic stuff. You can find anything on there and it's all pretty cheap in my opinion. I love the thought of carrying something that is one of a kind and hand made by someone else! But, I didn't buy anything today I just added to my "wishlist" because I am saving up for Big Lots! I can already in vision the pictures and poses I want to use the bench for, So exciting!

Business girl in a tizzy!

I can't believe that I haven't had time to blog this week. I am a firm believer that you can always make time for things that you "want' to make time for, but this week I disproved my own theory. I really love to blog, it's like therapy for me even if no one read it I would still do it just for myself (which that might be the case LOL). I usually keep things in perspective and can multitask really well but his has been an incredibly stressful week for me. The store has really given me fits this week. I always have to deal with call-offs, work drama (amongst the girls), stuff breaking down, the finances etc. but I usually don't have any problems keeping it all balanced this week however has been the complete opposite! I truly LOVE what I do and I wouldn't want it any other way I am just venting right now but listen to my week. The ice cream machine broke down, you try telling customers we don't have cones or shakes oh my gosh they get irate! So it took forever for the repair to get here then he told me junk it it will cost more to fix than it's worth, so now i have to find a good deal on one??? Then the brand new pizza oven we bought is having major problems not sure what we're going to do about that. I have had several calloffs that I've had to deal with, my kitchen manager is having family stuff to deal with and my heart goes out to her so I'm trying to make everything easy on her, all my tax stuff for 2nd qtr. Employee problems MAJOR ONES! we won't get into all that my blood pressure can't take it!!! Problems with pumps, Our ceiling is caving in one spot in the storage room, I mean the list goes on forever!!! not to mention the tasks that I have to do daily that take up most of my day. I am really stressin this week. My only serenity is when I'm with Rees, is that crazy? His high energy and hilarious antics make me forget everything else! I can't even put into words how amazing he is, I just can't image life without him now. What did I do before I had him? How did I make it through these rough times with work? I really can't remember! I am so glad I didn't schedule anymore appointments, I hate to turn people away but I don't think that I could have gotten through it with everything else going on. This is one of the few times that I will say that because i love being busy and always having something to move onto next but I really need a vacation! I am trying to talk Mat into a long weekend but he doesn't think Rees is ready yet? Crazy I know, he would do fine the traveling might suck but once we got there it would be fine. I'm going to keep working on it. I feel so much better talking about this. TGIF!!!!! I am going to whole up in my house this weekend and just sit and laugh at my little man.

Our weekend

Our family had a great weekend. I worked on Saturday then came home and got Rees ready for the b-day party that Abby took him too. So I had a couple hours to myself which was nice! Then Mat and I went in and picked Rees up and he was exhausted. We went and met my mom & dad at GAHS and took the tour, that school is AMAZING! It is so huge and beautiful, I am so proud of my hubby! We spent about an hour there I think about 30 minutes of it was letting Rees run like a mad man in the gym, he was having a great time! Then I had a Chinese craving so we went back in town and had dinner. After that we headed home and Bubba, Maurice and Patty came over to watch a horse race then Mat rented the ppp UFC fight (I didn't make it through that it took way too long for the main event to come on) but we had a great evening. Then today we had a family day again. We had lunch at Mexican, we ran into Melissa, Jon and Maggie (she is such a cutie) then we headed over to the dreaded Walmart. I hate it so much I would give anything to get Kroger back! There were so many dirty rude people in there today it was gross so I just grabbed the necessatities. Came home and Rees took a 2 hour nap as did his parents :) Now I am all alone Mat & Rees went over to Nana & Papaws for dinner and I stayed behind to edit Cash's photobook but decided I really needed to blog for a minute. These are a couple snap shots of Friday night when Rees was watering all my flowers that I had already watered but he apparently thought they were still thirsty! He is such a hard worker!!!!

TGIF

It's finally here. I love Fridays they always end up being short work days and Rees and I always get into something fun, today was swimming with my neighbor (Gretchen) We went to the pool and swam for a couple hours it was really fun. I love just doing nothing it doesn't happen very often but when it does it really relaxes me. I have to work in the restaurant in the morning, then Rees has a b-day party at the tumbling place, then I have a client coming to proof her order so tomorrow looks a little hectic but at least it's Saturday! (I really don't know why that makes me so happy even though Mat and I are both working I'm still okay with it just because it's Saturday??)

Some here a pics from my session with the sweetie pie from Wednesday, it was his first birthday Here's Cash (such a cool name)

Oh, I wanted to share one of the birthday cards that I designed for Cash's 1st b-day (this one is my fav)

It's almost the end of the week!

So it's Thursday, that makes me so happy! Although I have to work in the restaurant on Saturday then we have a bday party at Will power tumbling I am still looking forward to the weekend. It will be a little chaotic but I really want/hope to get some pool time with Rees in. I had the One year old photo shoot yesterday that went really well. I have so many pictures to edit! He had so much fun with the cake smash, I have never seen a child dig into a cake like he did! We had to put him in the sink to wash him off. It was hilarious. And made for great pictures. I'll share some later.

Yesterday was Morris' bday (My father in law) and it was a busy evening with work yesterday so we are doing dinner tonight. I have the pleasure of cooking it so here is what I am planning. Meatloaf (he likes my recipe) Yummy potatoes (the recipe is on my recipe share site) Calico beans (on other site too) corn on the cob, pasta salad, and 2 desserts Sorbet pie, and peach pie that I will attempt to make for the first time, it can't be that hard right??? So I have to head out to the grocery this morning after my little man gets up he's still in bed!

I think it's supposed to be nice out today so I might head out to the pool today if it is. I checked the temp on the pool last night and it was 86 so it's getting warm again. 92 is ideal :)

All I've got done in 30 minutes

Okay so I baked a cake (for my cake smash shoot tomorrow), folded a load of laundry, put it away (that's the part I hate the most), put in more laundry, fed the cat, watered the flowers, made the bed and most importantly made a scrapbook page! I am finally done with all of Rees' birthday pictures Wheewwww there were so many! Now I can start on the month of April pictures. I can't believe I am this far behind. But anyways here's my page and I have to go get ready for the day I am spending it with my wonderful sister!

My new favorite site

I was surfing this morning while eating breakfast and ran onto this amazing site! I have loved these designers for a long time and I didn't know that they design digital items now too! Heidi Swapp & Rhonna Farrer are so creative and I have been buying their scrapbook products for years. Now they make home dec stuff and blog wear all kinds of really neat things. Check out THIS link. When you get there go to the New section and then hit their blog too! They have some amazing stuff, I am so inspired right now I better work on a scrapbook page for the baby book (well now I guess I should call it the toddler book:)

A great resource

Does anyone want to learn how to make scrapbook pages, picture collages, enhance your photos or anything else that you can dream up? Photoshop Elements is the program you need. This is the "baby" version of Photoshop and it costs like $139 compared to $800 for the full version. Which is on my DREAM list (I'm likely never going to own it) but elements works so well that I'm content with it. It is difficult to learn at first but once you gain the basic knowledge of how the platform works it's like building blocks. There is still a lot I don't know but it's fun to play around and figure new things out as I go. This is the program I use to edit all my pictures and I build my collages and scrapbook pages with it too. You can download it for free right HERE. I think it's well worth the effort to at least download the free version and try it out. I use it to design my blog headers and paper for the sides it's so useful! I have found so many fabulous resources that I have learned so much from that I thought I would share a few. So first go dl the program then check out these websites.

1. Misty Cato...lots of beginner stuff to get you started.
2. Digi Photography for moms... lots of tutorials for actions (you'll learn that a little later on)
3. Of course good ol' Youtube for vidoe tutorials
4. Coffee Shop One of my very favorite websites that I visit everyday.

So I hope this gets someone started to understanding the program and taking advantage of all the useful things you can do with it. I get asked a lot about how I do things and this program is the backbone of everything that I create so if anyone has any interest in tutorials or free actions, etc. let me know and I would be happy to share!

Inspired

So I have been feeling nostalgic this weekend so I have been reading through Rees' baby books. I can't believe how big of a boy his is in such a short period of time, things just fly bye seems like there is very little time to appreciate the little things. That's my "mid-year" resolution, might as well make one the new years resolution sure didn't work :( but I want to take a step back from things for a little while this summer and just enjoy my time with Rees. Before long he's going to be talking and grow even more independent, which I am having a hard time with to my surprise. I can't believe he won't even let me feed him anymore Aghhhh!!!!! I need to slow things down a bit and go back to my roots....SCRAPBOOKING! I love the whole documentation aspect of it but it's such a creative outlet which is what my whole life is about. I try to find creative ways to do absolutely everything like gardening, photography, picture editing, card making, cooking, entertaining you name it and I try my hardest to make it "my own" with my creativeness. I really think that's why I have fell head over heals in love with photography and editing because it lets me share my creativeness with others. But, in terms of working (Korner & Photography) I really want to step back for the summer and make it all about the family. His childhood is slipping by so quickly and that's the only thing that really matters to me. I can try and perfect my craft slowly and use Rees as my muse! LOL, we all know that will be a challenge! I have a 1 year old cake smash on Wed. and Senior pictures for a guy next weekend and after that I think I'm going to take a break. We'll see how that works out for me. It truly is a challenge for me to "sit idol" I love to know that I have something to do after Rees goes down for bed or is taking a nap but that also comes with the down side of deadlines for getting pictures ready for proofing and submitting orders and packaging for people so as much as I love it it really does take up a lot of time. So for the next few months I think I'll just do family and friends that are understanding of my plan.

But, back to my roots thing as I was looking through his baby books (which I put together 12x12 scrapbook pages of) I noticed that around X-mas time they started to dwindle down and ended in March. I haven't scrapped since! I can't believe that I really thought I would scrap for the rest of my life at least once a week. And now that I actually have something that is meaningful to scrapbook I quit doing it??? I'm crazy. I really want Rees to have these when he gets older to know how he was raised and how much we love and adore him. So that is part of my break and something that will definitely give me something to do during nap time (I could be cleaning house but what fun is that:) I got a start on this weekend...

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