Christmas Card Time?

It’s no secret that I love Christmas cards! I’ve been looking around for ideas for this year because this year is going to be extra special. This year’s Christmas card will include a new member of the family! I’m thinking it will be perfect to have a combination Christmas card/birth announcement since our little girl will be born sometime in November. So crazy to think we’ll have a baby girl so soon!

The past couple years I have sent Shutterfly cards, and I have been so happy with them! They just added a bunch of new Holiday Cards for this year, and there are so many great options that it will be hard to decide which one to use! Check out their special offers page to see what is available right now. I love the great offers they have going on on a regular basis.

Here are some of my favorites I’ve seen from this year’s selection:

*This is a sponsored post.

Photo Themes for Prizes??

This year my cousin Jen and I have been doing Project 365 with a new theme each week. Check it out here!

I’ve just learned that Shutterfly currently has a photo contest going on with themes for each week as well. I might just have to enter- participating in a photo theme project with the chance of winning a prize! This week’s theme is “Great Outdoors” and we just happen to be going camping this weekend!

Long Live Summer – Facebook Photo Contest details – 7/9 – 8/12 Multi-week summer themed photo sweepstakes with instant win prizes.

Win a trip for four to The Bahamas and a professional photo shoot so you’ll remember your vacation forever.  All you need to do is upload your favorite photo and caption based on the theme of the week.  Get a gift from Shutterfly just for entering! You can enter at any point during the 5-week sweepstakes period.

PHOTO THEMES

•       Week 1(7/9): Americana

•       Week 2 (7/16): Great Outdoors

•       Week 3 (7/23): Water Fun

•       Week 4 (7/30): Sports & Activities

•       Week 5 (8/6): Parties & Celebrations

PRIZES

•       Instant win prizes just for submitting a photo!

•       Weekly prizes (contestants can enter one time/week)

•       Weekly featured photos: up to 5 weekly entries will be selected from the gallery and featured on the Facebook fan page and awarded a $500 gift card on Shutterfly and a copy of the new Lonely Planet travel photography book.

•       Grand prize: trip for 4 to Bahamas, 4 nights, family photo shoot

Scrap Room to Nursery!

I’m on my summer break, and since Trev was laid off a month ago, we’ve barely been home! At the beginning of the summer I made a to-do list of things I hoped to get done before going back to work in August, and now after traveling to visit friends and family, I finally have time to get some things done!

My dreams are finally coming true and I have the daunting task of turning our office/scrapbook room into a nursery! I have to keep reminding myself that this is a very good thing- I’m halfway through my pregnancy and we are going to have a little girl! The cleaning/organizing/purging is quite overwhelming! We are planning to move some furniture out of the front of our house and move some of the office furniture in there, and then turn this room into a little girl’s room. Before we can do that I have to go through everything in this room…and it’s a lot! I’m also hoping to paint the dark wood paneling in the front room white, and paint the office-turned-nursery blue. I’ve been looking around online for inspiration, and almost everyone has pink nurserys and pink everything for baby girls! I don’t love pink or a lot of classic baby stuff, so coming up with something else isn’t the easiest. At the same time, I am excited to be creative and make some things for the walls and all that fun stuff! Wish me luck!

Here are some things I am liking for the room:

Of course I love IKEA!

This is the Gulliver Crib which is rated highly by Baby Bargains. Not sure if I would go for an IKEA mattress or not though!

This is a Hemnes dresser, and it’s actually on sale right now! Hopefully we can manage to pick one up while it’s still on sale. Since I use this room to store my clothes, the dresser will have to be my clothes shared with baby clothes and things, and the dresser would also be used as a changing table.

I think a lot of the gliders I see are pretty ugly. Not sure if I will go for one of those or just pick up one of these:

Poang chair. You can also get a footstool. I’m not sure that we’ll have room for it in the nursery, but we could put it in our living room and get rid of the other IKEA chair we have.

Also, we already have this rug, and I am thinking of moving it to the nursery. Not sure yet, just keeping it a possibility:

There are so many different ideas for bird themes and I love birds! I’ll probably make a mobile. These sheets from Pottery Barn Kids have birds on them:

Here’s the skirt that goes with them:

I also like these sheets:

And skirt:

Ok, enough of my dreaming. 🙂 Time to get back to going through my scrap stuff! I need to box some up to put in storage, but also get rid of some of it that I know I won’t ever really use. After that’s all done, I still have to go through the dresser, closet, and our desk. Can’t wait to get it all done!

Five on Friday 3/16/2012

I’m back…for Five on Friday. I have so many things I want to write about, so I thought this would be easiest to get back to blogging with.

1. It has been so warm this week! In the 70s the 2nd week of March, in Minnesota? What??? A forecast of 75 for both today and tomorrow! The dog is happy. The students at work are happy (and already wearing way too short shorts). The neighbors are out and chatting. We are going to be able to sit around a fire in our yard tonight and not freeze!

2. It’s Friday and everyone at work is especially happy this Friday because our boys basketball team won the big game last night and moves on to the state finals! They haven’t done that in a few years, so that makes it even more exciting. It’s all anyone is talking about around here.

3. We’re having a lunch meeting today and ordering Broders, so I will finally get to eat something from there after only hearing about it for a long time! According to their website, they are going to be on Diners, Drive-Ins, Dives in one month. Fun!

4. Trev and I went out for dinner last night with one of his co-workers and her husband and we had such a fabulous time! I love being around people who are so positive, open, and are great at making conversation. We ate dinner in our neighborhood at Victory 44. We ordered a bunch of things and shared them all, and pretty much everything was delicious. What a wonderful evening!

5. Did you know you can find me blogging my Project 365 (+1- leap day) with my cousin Jen over at http://karinjen365.wordpress.com/? Each week we pick a different theme to base our photos on, and it’s really see the differences between my photos- life in MN, working, with no kids vs. Jen’s photos- life in AZ, home with kids. Good stuff!

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend. 🙂

Hello 2012

Hello 2012! Hello to a new year with one job, plans for trips, a 7-week summer break. Hello to a new year with hope and possibility. Hello 2012, hello!

 

2011 was:

*Working a temp job that brought me two assignments

*Getting hired permanently by two different places, but in the end being in the right place.

*Meeting new people and making new friends

*Going on vacation, sick, to California that was windy and cold

*Our garage being broken into twice!

*Finally getting my A1C down below 7!!!

*Completing Project 365 and then mostly taking a break from taking photos and blogging very much.

*Cousins camping at Lake Carlos, even more this year than the last!

*Camping with my fam in beautiful Door County, WI

*A tornado making a mess of our part of the city

*A lot more texting

*A new car for Trevor

*A lot of grapefruit breakfasts

*A lot of good and bad days all mixed together

*A lot of love.

 

Life these days

Life these past couple months: Vikings Broncos game at the MetroDome, work at the counseling office, Homecoming PepFest, Ugly Christmas Sweater party, Lefse making,  Thanksgiving in Sheboygan. The days really fly by with this job and all the other stuff going on. I am working, singing in the choir, hanging out with family, friends, neighbors, and still not taking the time to be creative and make stuff. My house is not organized like I like it. My closet’s been driving me crazy and I just pulled everything out and filled up a couple of bags of things I’m not putting back in. I’m way behind on all my Tivo’d shows except for a couple. It’s Christmas time and I don’t have any decorations up. But I am honestly happier than I was a year ago. Here’s to finding time, and to pretty please Lord Jesus not getting sick for Christmas this year! Love to you all, Kar.

Life in a Day

We watch a lot of streaming Netflix and especially a lot of documentaries, and last night we watched a really fascinating film called “Life in a Day.”  The imdb description is “A documentary shot by filmmakers all over the world that serves as a time capsule to show future generations what it was like to be alive on the 24th of July, 2010.” The movie  includes scenes selected from 4,500 hours of footage in 80,000 submissions from 192 nations, submitted by people after a video was posted on youtube asking for sumissions. I did a little research and discovered that 75% of the movie was made through those submissions and the rest came from cameras that were sent out to the developing world so that the whole world would be represented. Very cool.

You can watch it on streaming Netflix, but it is also available on youtube! It is a really interesting look at just one single day, at the world, nature, people, life. I found it beautiful and inspiring. It really makes you think about what a huge world we live in, and it made us want to travel! It also caused Trevor to pause the movie several times to explain various aspects of photography to me! There are some amazing views and perspectives shown.

Life in a Day trailer

Tiny Prints Christmas Cards

It’s that time of year! Tomorrow December is here. It’s hard to believe how fast the year has gone by, and how quickly winter is now here. December means Christmas is coming soon, and I LOVE Christmas cards. I love getting our mail every day and checking to see if there are any Christmas cards waiting for me from family and friends. It’s not even December and we’ve already received 3! I better get my act together so that I can send some out this year too.

I’ve been looking at the cards at Tiny Prints and there are so many great options! It’s hard to narrow it down to even a few because I really love the designs. In the past I have gotten some card samples from Tiny Prints and I love the quality and design options they have. I have never ordered my Christmas cards from them but I hope to this year. Here are a few of my favorite designs:

 

How fun are these??!! How do I decide?

My 200th Published Post

The mix I made this week:

1. You Know I’m No Good / Amy Winehouse

2. No Light, No Light / Florence + The Machine

3. Whirring / The Joy Formidable

4. Midnight City / M83

5. Madder Red / Yeasayer

6. Northern Wind / City and Colour

7. With Love / Elbow

8. Carol Brown / Flight of the Conchords

9. We Were Wealth / Wye Oak

10. Champagne Year / St. Vincent

11. $20 / Low

12. My Father’s Father / The Civil Wars

13. Know How / Kings of Convenience feat. Feist

14. Sadness is a Blessing / Lykke Li

15. Is This the End / Zee Avi

16. Clocks / Alicia Keys

17. Doors Unlocked and Open / Death Cab for Cutie

18. Strangeness and Charm / Florence + The Machine

19. Sooner or Later / Mat Kearney

We have snow on the ground here now. From leaves to snow. It waited a little longer to come this year. It makes me want to make my home more cozy and to drink more tea. I bought a couple of my old faves, Tazo Wild Sweet Orange and Tazo Refresh. I’m always organizing and reorganizing, or at least always have plans to do so. I’m hoping to declutter our office and my closet, once again, soon. Happy to only work two days and then be spending time with family. Who doesn’t love this time of year?

I like blogging…

I like blogging. It’s fun to share what I’ve got going on. At one point I decided I would blog next when I had finished a project that would be fun to share and be interesting to other people, and then it never happened. I don’t just mean the blogging part, but also the project! Life is funny that way. I finished Project 365 on my 31st birthday and then I practically stopped taking photos. I’ve taken far less photos in these past few months than I have in probably years. I guess a photo a day will do that to you. I noticed a couple of things though. When I took at least one photo every day, life seemed way more exciting and meaningful. I think blogging does that too. I’m 99% sure I’ll be doing Project 365 again starting January 1st, with some new creative prompts to go along with it, and I’d like to get back to blogging also.

I also must admit that it was not as easy to blog when I was job hunting. I didn’t share much about temporary work either, and then once I found myself in a permanent job, it was incredibly draining and a weird schedule. Now that I am working in a permanent position where I have a job that I love, and have gotten pretty settled in, I’ve found some time to scrapbook again and have started thinking of some new projects I would like to do. I’m feeling inspired again!

So hello again blogging world! It feels good to be back.