it's tomorrow, yes it is.

Hello 2012

karin — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 18:33:57 +0000

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

karin — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 04:44:18 +0000

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

karin — Sat, 03 Dec 2011 02:55:40 +0000

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

karin — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 01:39:43 +0000

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??!! You can see more of the designs here: Tiny Prints Christmas Cards. How do I decide?

My 200th Published Post

karin — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 17:50:33 +0000

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…

karin — Sun, 13 Nov 2011 22:36:20 +0000

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.

Summer Cleaning

karin — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 21:33:49 +0000

The past couple of days I’ve been spending lots of time on the following blogs:

Young House Love

A Bowl Full of Lemons and her 21 Day Organizing Project

Organizing Made Fun

With these blogs as my inspiration, I’ve been getting some organizing done around the house! I’ve been meaning to do some more Spring cleaning, but now it’s become Summer cleaning. Ha!

To start off, I organized under the sinks.

The kitchen sink first:

It wasn’t a disaster, but I knew I could make it better and get rid of even more stuff I wasn’t really using. I added some pretty green contact paper (from Target), and some various bins and baskets all purchased from Dollar Tree or the dollar spot at Target.

Before:

After:

There was so much stuff there that didn’t need to be! And now everything is organized into bins. The small green bin holds microfiber cloths. The cleaning products that are used daily are in 1, those used less regularly are in another, dish soap in 1, and everything I use to make daily shower spray are in another. By the way, I’m hoping to eventually make more and more of my own household cleaning products.

Then the bathroom sink.

This was more of a mess, but I already had some things in bins, so not awful. There were still lots of things to get rid of. I also decided to move some items to a different location since they weren’t being used enough to justify keeping them in our small bathroom. My real goal was making a place for a small garbage can to fit under the sink. Cash Howard has been making big messes in our bathroom because he likes to go into the garbage and pull out empty toilet paper rolls and tissues and such and shred them all up on the floor. I was getting really tired of it! I decided the only solution was putting the garbage under the sink. Hopefully this takes care of that!

Before:

It was a little hard to get to things…

After:

That’s a little better, huh?

And here it is with the garbage can added (got it at Dollar Tree):

I’ll be back with some more photos of what I’ve been organizing around here. It feels great to get this done and to get rid of a bunch of stuff we aren’t really using, especially when we only have 1000 square feet to live in.

Yarn wreath for Mom

karin — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:33:41 +0000

A year ago I showed you a couple of yarn wreaths I had made to hang on our doors. I decided to make one for my mom for Mother’s Day this year! To get some ideas I looked around on Pinterest. Have you been to pinterest yet? If not, why not? It’s fabulous! Anyway, I found some inspiration that led me to this. I made my very own version of one of the wreaths, and this is how it turned out.

And here is Mom with it on Mother’s Day, as posted on Facebook:

Making this one made me want to make some more! It’s sort of addicting. Making the felt flowers is pretty fun. The hardest part is guessing on the size of what you cut because it’s hard to tell how big the flower will turn out! Here’s a tutorial I would like to try out next time.

Office picture collage

karin — Thu, 05 May 2011 19:44:01 +0000

This is the final project I worked on last weekend. I have been meaning to replace the framed poster that was hanging in our office on the same wall as our desk and computer. I wanted to change it up. Recently I acquired some budget friendly items and I decided that it would work to hang them together in the office:

One 8×10 photo canvas from canvas people which I got for free ($49.99 value) and paid $14.99 shipping.

One 8×10 photo canvas from winkflash which I got for free ($49.99 value) and paid $8.99 shipping.

One 11×14 photo poster from Snapfish which I got for free ($6.99 value) and paid $2.99 shipping.

One matted picture frame (for 11×14 photo poster) from Big Lots for $12.

One photo frame which I purchased a couple years ago from Target clearance.

Two pieces of wall art from Goodwill for $1 each.

I started with all the recently acquired items and then added the picture frame I had to complete it. I am pretty happy with how it turned out!

Clockwise from top left: Trev and I in Sheboygan by Lake Michigan, Laguna Beach from our CA trip last March, Spring trees last year on Theo Wirth Parkway 1/2 mile from our house, a dahlia from my garden last summer.

Here’s where it is in the office. Looking at this photo makes me want to do some organizing!

This is in the same room where I have all my scrapbook stuff, as well as my dresser and closet! We live in an old house, and the closet in our bedroom is barely big enough for Trevor’s clothes, let alone both of ours. This room isn’t completely *mine* but almost, but don’t feel bad for Trevor- he has his work from home desk and video game room downstairs.

The Slide Lamp

karin — Mon, 02 May 2011 15:16:40 +0000

The second project I’ve been wanting to complete for a while and finished last weekend is a slide lamp! I originally saw this idea on She’s Crafty, a TV show I didn’t know existed until we canceled cable over a year ago. It looked like a fabulous idea! At one point I mentioned to Mom that I had hoped to make one. Several months ago she gave me a small bag of old slides that she didn’t want to keep. Most of them were of a parade and of Mom and her brothers and other family opening Christmas presents when they were kids. I knew they would be fun to use, but I didn’t have enough yet. Well, when we were at my parents’ for Easter Mom handed me a whole shoebox full of slides that were her great aunt Linda’s, (so my great great aunt). All of these slides were taken on trips she took, some in California and the southwestern states, and many on her travels in Europe. They appear to have been taken in the 60′s, and a small percentage of them have people in them. Once I had this box of slides I knew I could make my very own slide lampshade!

On Friday my friend Jen and I went thrift shopping and she helped me find an old lampshade I could tear apart to use as my base. It was $1.40 at a small thrift shop near her house. Not long after that we found a lamp at the Salvation Army for $5.99. At a craft store I purchased parchment paper to attach to the back of the slides, and 225 jump rings that I would be using to attach the slides (with a glue stick). I was really excited to make it, so late that night I started attaching the parchment paper to the slides while we watched TV. On Saturday I completed the project. It did take quite a bit of time to put this together, but I’m really happy with the results.

I have the lamp on an end table in our living room, which is the perfect spot.

I don’t know the stories behind any of these pictures, but it is fun to imagine. The strangest slides I found where a pair- one of an ambulance, and one of a woman on a stretcher going into the ambulance!