Twelve in 2012: Where I Am and Where I’m Going

Remember this post? Well, it is now 2012 and I am still gung ho on my twelve goals.  In fact, I even did some things in 2011 to help get prepped or even started on the goals.  Here is where I am right now on the goals:

1. Eat whole, unprocessed food without fillers or preservatives. I am concentrated on buying whole foods at the grocery store (veggies, fruits, lean protein).  I am reading labels more and while I am still buying some processed foods, it is less volume than before. 

2. Do Project 365 or some variant of it (Project 12 or Project 52).  I signed up for Katie the Scrapbook Lady’s Roundup class at Big Picture Classes.  I don’t think I will necessarily do a P365 but possibly a P52 or even P12.  I am doing a 30 day photo challenge right now for January.

3. Focus on the relationship with  my husband.   I am making a concerted effort to not nag and be more considerate.  The girls are with the g’s this week so Jon and I get the week to just us.

4. Spend more one on one time with each of my children.   Working on turning the TV off more often and reading some more.  Eating dinner at the table and playing games. 

5. Clear the clutter out of my home and keep it out.   Well my mother was here this weekend and she is OCD and I mean that in a good way.  She loves to come and help clean up my home.  So I have cleaned out my fridge, my freezer and one cabinet in my kitchen.  I have also cleared and reorganized my kitchen counters.  I have signed up for a clutter clearing newsletter and have a 365 clutter clearing calendar. 

6. Focus on my own health and mental well-being. Joined Weight Watchers and I will attend my first meeting tonight.  I also have joined the Biggest Loser competition at Scrap Orchard.  However, right now I am battling a sinus infection which totally bites.

7. Create a home and not just a house that reflects who we are as a family. I have painted about 95% of my living room (I have a little part that we can not reach easily) and my kitchen in a gorgeous brown and yellow.  LOVE IT!  and it makes me so happy.

8. Work on paying off debt so we can live like no one else.   haven’t done anything on this yet. 

9. Work on communicating with my entire family, both immediate and extended.  I just spent the weekend with my mom and dad and it was so much fun!  The girls are with them for a week like I said above and then they will be back for another day or so.  I also sent out all my thank you notes to family for Christmas. 

10. Create a family command center for all of our needs and activities. My mom made a really cool week framed calendar (I will post a picture tomorrow) and I need to re-hang the girl’s chore charts and we have our new calendar on the fridge. 

11. Carve out family time each week, eat dinner, play a game, something to bring us together as a family. I’ve got the girls on board with eating more at the table, playing games, and reading stories at night.  Jon, not so much.  But he is a work in progress. 

12. Read more and gather more information about subjects and interest me and intrigue me.  I am reading a book for Sweet Shoppe Designs Book Club, The Happiness Project.  Loving every word.  And I have been loading up the Kindle with fun books for me and the kids.  I am also adding new blogs to my reader.

Where I need to go this next month.  There is one goal I have done nothing on so far and that is paying off debt.  I guess the nice thing is that I accrued no debt over the holiday season, but I have nothing in the savings, so after posting this, I will move $50 into my ING savings account and will continue to do so every pay period.  I also want to focus carving out family time, including Jon.  Even if it means hiding the modem.  So there you go. 

Currently Obsessed with: KRAFT!

Okay I have serious scrap obsessions and what better to do with obsessions than to pass along to my friends and people I care about.  So periodically I will probably do a post like this every so often and it will about something I am seriously obsessing about at the moment.  I change on a whim and I am an equal opportunist so the products I list here can either be something I own, want to own, or wish I had thought of. 

So right now, got a jonesin’ for kraft.  Let’s talk about the ultimate neutral.  Kraft is just brillant and sometimes I wish I could put kraft onto every page I use.  And sometimes I think I do!  Plus, don’t even me going on colored kraft.  Died and gone to heaven.  I kid you not.  So here are some great kraft items.

 

   

There is just a small sampling and not even including all the kraft that comes in kits! 

December Daily Days 1 through 4

I completely forgot to share here that I’m doing December Daily.  It is the project of this kind that I have successfully completed.  I made a book two years ago and I loved it.  For anyone that is curious, I’m going all digi.  I use templates every day which makes the pages come together quickly.  I have tagged along my Christmas kits in Picasa along with all my winter kits as well.  So things have gone pretty quickly.  I generally scrap two days at a time.  So I scrap two pages, take a day break, scrap two pages, take a day break.  That seems to work best for me.  I’m thinking of printing individual pages as 8”x 8” and putting them in a 3 ring album with other page protectors to put other mementos into from the holiday season.

Cover Page.  I went kind of simple, no pictures.

Day One.  We are doing Elf on the Shelf for the first time this year.  The Bear named her Emerald.

Day Two.  We went to Hallmark to pick out ornaments for the girls and one for me as well.  It was an interesting trip, but to be fair to my girls, there was not enough help at the store.

Day Three.  We decorated a mini gingerbread village.  I learned many lessons today and the girls had a lot of fun.  But next year, pre-assembled houses!

Day Four.  Just a quick rundown of some of the movies we have watched in the past few days.  Can you guess which ones are mine?

 

Now you can see some similar elements on the pages.  I decided to use Stolen Moments’ Hold It: 1’s & 2’s for all day numbers and then for the word “December” it from Circle That Date by Erica Zane.  Other than that, it is al different but oh so fun!  Most of the kits are from Sweet Shoppe Designs but Day 3 using stuff from Britt-ish Designs.  The templates are from Queen of Hearts, Cindy Schneider, and Darcy Baldwin. 

12 Things in 2012

For those of you coming over from my design blog, welcome!  This is where I will be doing my majority of my blogging while I am on design hiatus.  I have decided that I want to focus on 12 things in 2012.  Why 12?  Well it fits well with 2012 and I can focus extensively on 1 thing a month, even though they will be ongoing projects.  Here is my list of twelve:

1. Eat whole, unprocessed food without fillers or preservatives.
2. Do Project 365 or some variant of it (Project 12 or Project 52).
3. Focus on the relationship with  my husband.
4. Spend more one on one time with each of my children.
5. Clear the clutter out of my home and keep it out.
6. Focus on my own health and mental well-being.
7. Create a home and not just a house that reflects who we are as a family.
8. Work on paying off debt so we can live like no one else. 
9. Work on communicating with my entire family, both immediate and extended.
10. Create a family command center for all of our needs and activities.
11. Carve out family time each week, eat dinner, play a game, something to bring us together as a family.
12. Read more and gather more information about subjects and interest me and intrigue me.

As you can see only one has something to do with scrapping but I believe that all of them focus on family.  Which is going to be my one little word for the upcoming year.  Family is something as much as I try, I feel like I ignore or push aside for other things. And this past year has made me realized that I can not continue to allow that to happen.  I really want my girls to have kind of childhood that I did.  We ate around the dinner table every night, we played board games together, and we could sit down and talk or read a book whenever.  In the end, it is those memories, and not material things, that I cherish the most.  So every month, I will focus on one of these twelve things.  I welcome any comments, tips, tricks that my readers might have.  The more the merrier, I say!

The DSD Aftermath: The Rest of the Haul!!!

Okay finally getting the rest of the stuff I bought for DSD.  After I went to Britt’s, I headed over to Sugar Hill Co.  for CU.  Here is what I got over there:

 

 

Yeah, I got a lot of ribbons, but I am always looking for fun new stuff!

I also did shopping at Sweet Shoppe Designs and Scrap Orchard but I will make those the post for Monday, since there is quite a bit, but here is what I got at the other stores.  I got this at Oscraps:

I took Peppermint’s shadow class over at Big Picture Classes and I have loved her technique.  So I couldn’t resist snagging these shadow styles with her newsletter coupon!  I have been using them since and I am in love with my pages!  I also went over to After Five Designs to pick up this, which was enabled to me during a chat at SO.

Epic is definitely the right word for it!  There are 4 sets of 4 templates in this grab bag and it was just $4!  Talk about a deal!  I have never bought from Carly before but I love her style!  This is definitely a designer on my to watch list!  Then I went to my4hens photography to snag some photo actions at 40% off!  I have a bunch but they are stuck on the dead to me desktop.  So I needed more!  I picked up these two sets!

This one has the most perfect black and white action.  Again, a recommendation from the fabulous Peppermint!

And finally, I managed to get a purchase in over at the Lilypad.  The poor site kept crashing over the weekend but I managed to sneak in and snag these:

   

And that is most of what I got!  I will come back on Monday for the big finale of Sweet Shoppe Designs and Scrap Orchard! 

CT CALL FOR WM!

As you may be aware, I am really blessed to be on Wendy’s CT team for WM [squared] Designs!  She just moved over to Scrap Orchard and is still creating gorgeous kits and templates!  She has a CT Call starting today for her Spring Team!  So come and apply!  Here are all the deets:

This is team is so much fun!  I can’t wait to see who joins the team! And for those looking for my DSD purchase stuff.  I am so sorry, I have been fighting bronchitis all week on top of I didn’t take a day off of work, so it has been a struggle to stay up and post when you are taking cough syrup!  But I will do a mega post tomorrow with most of my stuff! So stay tuned!

The DSD Aftermath: What I Bought Part 1- Britt-ish Designs

Okay, let me preface this with the fact that for the past year, I have been on a serious budget, so scrapping supplies have been low on the list of things to buy.  So this DSD I got paid the day before and I had a nice budget for supplies, so I went a little crazy!  Here are the following places where I made purchases:  Scrap Orchard, Sweet Shoppe Designs, Sugar Hill Co., The Lilypad, Britt-ish Designs, Oscraps, After 5 Designs, and My 4 Hens Photography.  Yep, that’s right 8 stores.  And there were still at least two more I had planned on buying from but didn’t!  So I have definitely contribute to the continuation of the digi scrap industry.  Over this week, I will posting exactly what I bought and some commentary.  I think hearing from other scrappers is the best way to find out about stuff. 

So the very first place I went to was Britt-ish Designs.  I have been following Britt since I started scrapping at ScrapMatters, in fact, pretty sure she is why I found the site.  When she moved out on her own, I don’t always remember to check her store.  But she is in my blog reader so I am getting better.  I will say that I am not a Disney scrapper but I still find ways to use her stuff.  It is just too cute!  Here is what I got:

I got these because Carrie dressed up like Snow White for Halloween this year and I need to scrap the photos.  Plus with two girls, princesses are a must.  And to go with them, I got this bundle:

I’m a sucker for cute and versatile alphas, so I picked up these:

And this kit was so pretty, I could not resist picking it up, the colors are great for all sorts of pages!

Big Pixie Hollow fans in our house.  So I thought this would be perfect, but big hint to Britt, bring on the fairies!

Pink and Purple, yeah it went into my cart. 

Loving these!  Will be perfect on all those templates I snagged this weekend!

Finally, Carrie has a stuffed Minnie doll that is her current favorite, plus she is in love with Daisy.  Had to get it.

And that is just a small part of my shopping odyssey.  Come back tomorrow to see my next stop, Sugar Hill Co. where I picked up some smoking deals on CU!