Unemployed

Today is that day where everybody went back to work after the holidays.  Everybody except me that is.  It feels really weird and I kind of don't know what to do with myself.  I love the feeling of freedom but I'm also scared.  I want to enjoy some time off but not more than a month because then paying our mortgage becomes a problem.  I was notified of our layoff 2 months ago and the unfortunate thing about this layoff is both my husband and I work for the same company in the same division; and they cut our entire division. He has one more month of work but I was done as of December 31.  And the thought of us both being unemployed at the same time is absolutely terrifying.  However I'm a positive thinker (or I'm in complete denial) so we will cross that bridge when we come to it.  Until then I have decided to make my January to do list and get some stuff done that I have been procrastinating on forever:

1. Go to yoga twice a week and try to embrace that yoga-zen thing that doesn't work so well for me.
2. Fully convert our guest bedroom into a craft room (yippee!)
3. Make thank you cards.
4. Paint that wall in our hallway/bathroom with all the test paint strips on it...finally
5. Clean out my damn closet
6. Get cracking on my craft to-do list which includes taking a photo a day for weekly pages, making a bunch of bracelets that I have tutorials for.

These are NOT New Years Resolutions, I don't believe in those because they never actually get done.   This is just my to-do list.

And finally, some of my recent pages:

Fall Sunset-Fancy Pants Summer's End

The Whole Fam-American Crafts Margarita

I love this My Minds Eye line! (Happy Days)

Christmas in Santa Fe

I was kidding myself when I said I might post photos during my trip.  I was also kidding myself when I thought I would take a lot of photos.  Thankfully we have a professional photographer in the family so I anxiously await my brother Jeff Warner's photos of our big, chaotic family Christmas.  However here's a couple of my shots that came out OK.

My nephews-TROUBLE

The kidlets, posing for the pro photographer

Santa Fe Plaza Lights

St. Francis Cathedral-downtown Santa Fe

Oh Christmas Tree (and a ridiculous amount of presents)

Snowball Fight!

MJ's first fake nails-Hello Kitty

American Crafts Chap

My favorite line of the moment is American Crafts Chap.  It's versatile, got great colors and loads of embellishments to round out the cool papers.  My only problem is that the only place I can find that carries it is Two Peas in a Bucket and they sell out pretty quickly. Thankfully they just re-stocked and I stocked up on multi-sheets of paper. This is my first layout with it, my nephew, filthy after 3 days of camping.

It's A Summer Thing

Oh how I wish it was summer right now.  The weather in beautiful Southern California has been rainy, cold and miserable.  We've actually had to turn the heat on for the past week, yes I know, poor us.  But some of us are made for warmer temperatures and don't do so well in cold.  My best solution to cold crappy weather is to scrap (and daydream) about warm, summer beach days.  My niece gives me the best photo ops, a shot of her snapped at the beach this past summer, dancing away. I was having a hard time with the Cosmo Cricket's Salt Air collection before this layout.  I don't know what it was but everything I used it in came out looking crappy, very pleased with this one though. The text on the bottom reads, "McKinley always dances as if everybody is watching."  A little star she is.

Waves cut out with my Silhouette

The Jurassic Kook

I leave near a town called Cardiff-by-the-Sea, California. About 4 years ago a statue was erected of a surfer that was dubbed the Cardiff Kook because of it's ridiculous pose, the real name of the statue is "Magic Carpet Ride."  It's a running joke and people dress it up almost weekly.  Every once in awhile a very elaborate makeover is done.  This photo is of what was called Jurassic Kook with a pterydactyl grabbing the Kook by it's shoulder and a prehistoric scene around it.  There were even "dinosaur eggs" left all around the area.  It was awesomely amazing and took a lot of work by whomever pulled this one off in the dead of night.  I used and old SEI line for this one, Madera Island. I don't usually use a fully solid paper in layouts because I think it's too boring, this is no exception.  But I love all the other elements.

Jurassic Kook-SEI Madera Island

The other all time prank on the Kook is the Shark Attack, check it out:

I finally did it

I was finally able to find the time to take part in a challenge before the deadline.  But then I realized I may have done it wrong.  I did Basic Grey's Weekly Challenge which was to use the cover of their Summer 2011 catalog as inspiration for a layout.  The problem is that I didn't use BasicGrey product for it, whoops.  I am not sure if that is a requirement for their challenges or not. Anyway here is the cover:

And here is my interpretation using American Crafts Margarita collection. I did it very literally. I realized as I uploaded that there is no title to this layout but I don't know that it really needs it.

Hiatus

I took a week long hiatus from here but that week certainly didn't feel like a break.  I'm pretty sure I drank my way through the long weekend but I also got to see a dear old friend I hadn't seen in a year and buy waaaay too many pairs of shoes with the great Black Friday deals going on (it 2 pairs of Jeffrey Campbells in one day too many?) I then returned to absolute mayhem at work on Monday.  I work for an online retailer so this time of year is nuts for us. I haven't had time to do my usual trolling of my favorite blogs for ideas but I've added some more inspiration layouts to my Pinterest to refer to when I have more time.  Here are a couple layouts I hadn't gotten around to posting yet.

The Fourth-BasicGrey Offbeat

Lap Kitty-BasicGrey Mellow

Cheers-Crate Paper Random

Cute-Crate Paper Neighborhood

Crazy Daisy-BasicGrey Indie Bloom