i do believe in faeries...

Hosting programs at the library sometimes has benefits. Like, when you get free face painting.

And when you've never had your face painted before (because your mom always said no)...it's a pretty amazing event.

Loving my SLR today.

ah, weekend.

It's a glorious rainy Saturday. And I'm spending it at work. Not quite my ideal day. :\

Working today means I did not have to work yesterday - and it's sometimes equally as nice to have a Friday off work. We spent most of the day working on the disaster area garage. Here's a before photo.

All this stuff has accumulated over the course of the entire 2009 AGDT Season, as well as BSCT's The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. Pretty much what happens is, at the end of a performance, everything gets thrown in the back of the garage and I just hope it will disappear. Unfortunately, it never seems to get the hint.

Here's what it looked like at the height of the disaster yesterday, after we had pulled everything off the back wall to sort and reorganize.

It's not finished yet, but I'm hoping to wrap the project tomorrow afternoon. I have a huge carload of stuff to take back to my mom's house, another huge load of stuff to take to BSCT, and yet another huge load of TRASH to be dealt with. After I move all of that out, it should be a nice sensible organized space.

Here's my layout for this week's Studio Calico sketch challenge. It took me most of the week - finally finished it last night. I love having a timed challenge to inspire me to get the page done!


This was a fun night of babysitting a little over a year ago. I can't believe how much these kids have grown up since then. Time is just flying by...can't even imagine what it's going to be like when I have my own babies.

Happy Saturday, all!

it was a productive monday.

Spring is HERE!!

At least, it's consistently been above freezing lately (for three days anyway). This new development is SO exciting. I've had my windows open the past couple days...I'm excited for spring.

On Sunday, I went on a mass organization frenzy and mostly redid the living room and the office. This desk formerly held the top half of a Walmart bookshelf - which was stuffed to overflowing. We condensed the books - excited for garage sale season! - and were able to move the small half-bookshelf to the garage, where it will eventually hold my AGDT library.

I'm excited to have the bulletin board hanging as well. I think I bought it in last year's Lakewood garage sales...so 9 months ago.

The hall coat closet went through a major overhaul as well. The floor was previously covered with tons of bags - plastic, paper, and otherwise - and random cardboard boxes. I think this stuff had been in there since we moved in. I also organized all of the winter accessories on the top shelf - they used to be all shoved in just one basket. Obviously they did not fit and it was very difficult to find anything.

Yesterday I spent part of my last free Monday (AGDT starts next week) at Hobby Lobby. A quick shot of all the goodness waiting to be unloaded at home:

I have been working on a wall art idea for probably 6 months - and I finally decided to make it a reality. Here is the finished product -

It features photos from our shoot with Lindsey at the Plaza last October, and has the lyric from the finale song in Beauty and the Beast - which was our wedding recessional. ♥ it.

While at Hobby Lobby to purchase the supplies for this wall art, I realized that they have coordinating fabrics to the paper I selected!! I immediately decided that new couch pillows were in order, to try to give a cute pop of color to my mostly bland living room. So this is the fabric - will definitely post photos once the project is underway.

Also randomly decided that the house needed some cute floral arrangements. Here is my "test" one - I really love it and am planning to make a few matching ones, to set on top of the piano as well.

Book club at work last night - we made miniature kites. Wow, it's difficult to get 14 little girls to work on a project that involves small pieces and tying knots. But success - everyone went home with a finished product.

All in all? It was a good Monday.

Now, today? It's been okay so far. But check out my to-do list for tonight/the rest of this week:


Yep, that's just half the list. I'm off to cross off one thing...finishing this blog post! Woohoo! :)

one more dancing note.

We're back from the trip to St. Louis for Grandma's funeral. Andrew's at the theatre today, helping with strike for NigHt of tHe pterodActyls. I'm trying to get the house back in order...after a full week of being off work and feeling too sad and sick (sinus issues) to do anything. Needless to say, the house is pretty much trashed. It's getting better though. I have a Disney soundtrack playing and the windows open. It's the little things.

Anyway - here's a project I made on Wednesday to share with the family at Grandma's funeral service. I'm really pleased with how it turned out. The "Forever Dancing" title - I've had a set of rub-ons from Basic Grey for ages and this seemed like a great project to try them out on. I love the result.


I have a half-written supply list, somewhere. Can't find it. And can't remember where all the flowers came from. Oh well.

The funeral was beautiful - perfect for my sweet Grandma. Still very sad that she is no longer here with us...but I know we'll see her again.

Currently facing the thought of going back to work tomorrow. I worked 2 hours last week. Not sure how tomorrow is going to go....

dancing.

My sweet grandmother, Maxine Codemo, went home to be with Jesus today.

It's been a hard day. I really haven't had a lot of experience with death. But I was able to be at the hospital with her today. And I think it helped.

Today Grandma was surrounded by her six children, who cried and laughed, and sang some good Codemo renditions of When The Roll is Called Up Yonder and some of her other favorite songs.

She went home at 1:19pm.

We are sad. But we know she's in Heaven with Jesus, where she has longed to be her whole life. She's there with Grandpa. She has kids there that she has never met, and grandchildren too. There's definitely a celebration going on up there.

And I think she and Grandpa are dancing. Even though (being the good conservative woman she is!!), she will likely deny it once we all get there to see her again. i just know they're going to be dancing for a long, long time.


We miss you already, Grandma.