Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Organize your Stuff (round 5): WOYWW 160


Wow! It is Wednesday again! We know, we know. Wednesday happens the same time every week, and yet it always seems to catch us by surprise! Today is WOYWW (what’s on your work desk Wednesday). It is our chance to share our desk and peek at those (who are way more crafty) around the world. The always Awesome Julia at the Stamping Ground is our hostess with the mostess (and the POW envies her organization to pull this off every week)!

Here is our desk this week…

Ooops, that is not a desk, it is a laptop! Well that is because we are at my parents for the 4th of July/ Independence Day holiday with the tribe. Rather than taking a bunch of stuff on the plane, the POW decided that a laptop and our digi files was all we needed.

Here is the layout so far… it still needs some input from Fabulous Spouse, but we are working our way through the disc of photos we received in the beginning of the month.
The POW also wants to apologize on behalf of all of us for missing the last two weeks. The kids’ last two weeks of school were insane! So, we have been in hyper overdrive overcommittedness (ODC Me wants to let you know that our spell check does not recognize that as a real word). Real words or not, there has been very little crafty time, bloggy time, or down time.

Creative Me has been stuck in the car with the rest of us going from point A to point B to point C and then back to A with the rest of us. Therefore, the only craftiness that we have is a digi page that we did in Photoshop for our 31 Days class with Ali Edwards at Big Picture Classes (the focus is the journaling prompts not necessarily the layout), and now this. We have a laptop, will travel!

The POW and OCD me have been also in discussions. We have come to the realization that round 5 of the Organization Challenge is derailed beyond repair in our lives. So, we are going to regroup, enjoy our vacation at Grammy’s house, and perform an intervention with PA Me and the Inner Hoarder when we return. If that does not work, Creative Me knows where we keep the colored duct tape…. Hmmmm..

(***The POW warns that there is family stuff from this part out. Scroll to the end if you are just here for the desk***)

Fabulous Spouse is still working 18 hour days for the General on the Front. As a birthday present, he got to go on a field trip for 36 hours (no pictures from that yet). Our mail monkeys (the same ones that fixed the airplane in Madagascar 2) delivered the box of cupcakes, the box of REI socks, but not the box with the frosting, candles and other snacks. We guess that is the price for living in a war zone! However, he did get a picture of his P90X workout team. (sing with us: one of these things is not like the others...ours is the one in yellow) :)

It is hard to believe that Oldest Child is finally moving up to High School! He spent the last two weeks getting a bunch of awards (requiring being driven to extra events).
This was made interesting by the addition of the character/ female girl, "She-who-must-not-be-named".  Oldest Child ditched us at the Track banquet to spend time eating with She-who-must-not-be-named, then She came to his concert to watch him recieve the Most Improved award. Oldest Child even dressed up for the last Thursday of school, where the 8th grade semi formal...and She-who-must-not-be-named was in attendance.
He even missed the last day of Freshman Football week for this! He is the boy in the middle with the bright green top!
As for the others...the little guys have been afoot making mishief.  We celebrated their 1/2 birthdays on Father's Day, and had a wild time at the local pool!  With winter birthdays, there is nothing like celebrating when your kids CAN come, in the spring!
Next we were off to brave the air travel from Pacific Northwest to the Outer Banks of NC (with only a 4.5 hour layover).  That was ok. We were on a mission to track down some Chic fil A chicken (not served in Washington...ok there is one in Bellingham, but that is practically Canada).
Tummies full, we arrived, and the fun began! Family time at the pool when the seas were too rough to take the boat out.
Mongolian BBQ with real East Coast Wonton Soup (mmmm) a quart got sent home by the Inner Hoarder and she ate it for lunch.
Finally, it was Monday, and the boys were off for two weeks of sailing camp! We wish them well and very few capsizes.  We love them!

We will be here to blog hop and chat back, so please drop us a line!

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Organize your Stuff (round 5): WOYWW 157


Welcome wonderful Wednesday and all that is WOYWW (What’s on Your Workdesk Wednesday) where we wander and watch the countertops, benches, laps, floors or anywhere that crafty happens around the globe. It is hosted, as always, by the wonderfully awesome Julia at the Stamping Ground.

For starters, the POW was super excited to find two little goodies in the post today. Our first ATCs from abroad! (Wow, her Majesty’s mail is fast! We are afraid that our lowly mail monkeys are not nearly as efficient).

Thank you so much Jo (Twiglet) and Jill! The POW assures you that while delayed getting to the post office, they are enroute. (PS- We love you mail lady).

Next, of course is our desk…


Stamps:Avocado Arts; Ink:Momento, Copic
Paper:Bazzill, Cratepaper
In the wonderful world of crafting, Creative Me has been working on some extra ATC’s for those extra gals who agreed to swap with us last week, so that they could be mailed, a Father’s Day card (forgot to photograph), our 31 Days prompts, and this…

We have been busy! Which of course means that the craft room has not gotten any cleaner. PA Me keeps telling the POW and OCD Me that we will get to it after school gets out…which is soon.

(**The POW’s warning: The rest is Family stuff. Scroll to the end if you are here just for the desk!**)

Fabulous Spouse finally sent us some pictures from his new office on the Front. He is the guy in the middle of the back row that looks like he is hiding, because he should really be in the front row. (PS- Fabulous Spouse is 5’ 10 “ which makes everyone else giants). He is currently working 15+ hour days, so we keep hoping that that whatever sleep he gets is quality sleep! (Silly war, not going on during normal working hours!)

Oldest Child finished up his Middle School Track career. He also went to his Boy Scout Order of the Arrow Ordeal, and passed. Since it rained this weekend the POW worried about him…sleeping under the stars in nothing but his sleeping bag and a tarp.

Illusive Middle Child was boy scout camping as well. This was his first “official” campout with the Boy Scouts (he is a Webelos as of Thursday, and those cub scouts ARE allowed to camp with the big boys). He played all sorts of skill games, shot archery, was pulled in the human chariot races, made meals, and got to climb the giant pioneering tower one campsite over. He LOVED it.

Girl Friday camped as well (at Great Wolf Lodge with the Girl Scouts) and then spent the week prepping for the 1st Grade School Musical. The theme was Old MacDonald, and her class was all pigs. She had a blast, and if we knew how to embed video, we just might have!

Have a great WOYWW! Off to go hoppinng!

Friday, June 1, 2012

Organize your Stuff (round 5): One Little Word- May

Nihao, Cupcake! Blog
Today is June 1st, which meant that it is time for us to share our May Homework or the One Little Word (OLW) Class by Ali Edwards at Big Picture Classes, where we pick a word for the Year, and live it…and document it.  Margie at Nihao Cupcake organizes us and has the master list of homework hoppers!

Our word for this Year is Journey. May’s homework was to create a task list for your word in your life. There are ongoing tasks, and more concrete ones.

Here is our list (ok, the first 5…)


For those who may not know, we chose Journey for our word because Fabulous Spouse left for a year in Afghanistan the day after Christmas. 2012 was definitely going to be a Journey. This month we reflected on that and what we wanted out of this Journey. We definitely did not want it to be a trip to some deserted island of isolation, so what were we doing, or did we need to do to thrive… and make this Journey a great Adventure!

So, #1: Enjoy the Journey. If you cannot embrace (our word from last year) your situation, you cannot thrive. We are thrivers! (is that a word? OCD Me says no.)

#2: Engage your friends. Life is an island when your only support person is the cat. (Although, we do love her dearly). The POW cautions that this does not mean that we become that stalker chick friend that causes people to change phone numbers and block calls. Rather, it means that at least once a week we need to get our Creative Me heads out of the scrap room and off the computer, and have lunch or do something with another live person. Live people are good for us. (but not in the creepy zombie eat brains kind of way! LOL!)

#3: Faith. This one we were kind of doing before January, but the POW wanted to step it up a notch. Right about the time that Fabulous Spouse was deploying, we were invited to be a part of the Long Range Planning Team for our church. This was a big, time intensive project. We almost said no. However, we went to the first meeting, explained our situation, and they asked us to stay and give what we could. 6 Months in, and we have only missed 2 meetings due to conflict with kid schedules. Faith is more than showing up in prayer once a week, and we have learned a lot about our church in the process. We need to work that. (downside, we have been really bad about showing up for that once a week prayer…babysteps… LOL!)

#4: Have Fun with your Kids! This has been ongoing and hopefully will be. The POW has to remind us sometimes that we are not the only ones affected by this Journey. Our new “normal” impacts the kids as well. When they look back on this experience, we want them to remember it with pride and fondness, not that it was something that they endured.

#5: (My only specific task) Walk a 5K. Oldest child is training for football…and the football team 10K, the others are active as well. What kind of an example are we if sit on our bottom while we expect them to sweat and play? Writing it down really helped to motivate. May 17th, we did it. 50.42 minutes…and our knees have not forgiven us, but that is OK.

Here is the Hop List:
Cindy http://seriousplay.typepad.com/
Margie http://xnomads.typepad.com/ 
Monica http://scrapinspired.com/tag/one-little-word/
Jenn http://www.studiojenn.blogspot.com/
Lisa http://backtoallen.com/category/challenges/one-little-word/
Kimberlee http://scrapsandsass.blogspot.com/
Donna http://holimess.blogspot.com/
Monica B http://questtoperfectimperfection.blogspot.com/
Ruth http://suburbansahm.blogspot.com/
Kara http://iwannabemewhenigrowup.blogspot.com/
Nikki http://www.inkyart.com.au/