19. November 2008 by admin.

I am NOT a cold weather person.  It’s that simple.  I am always cold.  Even in the summer I sleep with a down comforter (ok, it’s old and the down’s broken down already).  I do not like fact that it’s only the 19 of November and it’s only 20 degrees outside.  All that tells me is I’m in for a LONG winter.  Nope, I’m not a cold weather person.

Tomorrow is the umteenth national Great American Smoke Out.  I thought I’d get a head start.  For those of you who have been around for forever, you may remember how I quit smoking last November.  Cold Turkey vacation style.  I did great,  easy as pie.  Of course, pie, cake, candy everything went into my mouth and I gained 18 lbs as the result.  I was never one of those who smoked more when I drank, just the opposite.  The combination of the 2 really disagreed with me.  That was when I was young and spent more time at the bar.  Fast forward to the summer past and lo and behold, yep Diane’s smoking again.  First it was an innocent bum one here, bum another there.  Then stress took hold one day and nothing was standing between me and that pack I bought to pay back the person I was bumming from.  Tried to quit again, made it about 5 days and then back to the drawing board.  Well, I’m at it again.  Quitting that is.  And I’m a bitch.  Now if you’ve never smoked, consider yourself blessed.  If you’ve quit and stayed quit, truly blessed.  If you’re like me, totally addicted then you understand where I’m coming from.  I had to make a choice and it should be an easy one.  Quit!  With cigarettes at $4.50 plus a pack (includes tax) times 3 maybe 4 a week; well that was my scraping budget when I first quit and it was a great way to justify it in my brain to keep me going.  Add the fact that the insurance company my health insurance is changing to charges an extra $35 a month for smokers.  That seals the deal.  I have no choice but to quit AGAIN.  So why is it so hard to do.  I swear there are times I feel like I’d kill for a smoke.  And don’t watch tv.  It’s all anyone does on tv nowadays.  I swear you see more smoking on tv when you’re trying to quit.  So anyway, tomorrow is the Great American Smoke Out.  Join me and let’s be miserable together.

New stuff coming out this weekend.  Previews coming soon.  Winter Wonderland is now in my shoppe over at the Garden and is on sale for 30% off til Sat.  Snag this awesome collab while you can.

Until next time…..have a great day and for you smokers, keep quitting. 

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17. November 2008 by admin.

Yep. It’s officially winter. And early too. Bummer.

A pretty boring weekend here. Watched football, Nascar and tried to finish up another Christmas kit. I also read, something I don’t get enough time to do. My mom sent a huge sack load of books back with me. This weekend it was The Guardian by Nicholas Sparks. You know, the guy who wrote The Notebook. (I’ve never seen the movie) Anyway, it was pretty good and a little different from his normal love stories.

Have you ever heard of RedBox video? They’re the DVD dispensing machines that are often at grocery stores and such? We have one at the Giant Eagle we shop at. It’s a pretty good concept, you rent new releases for $1 plus tax a night. It’s a pretty good concept unless you run into problem like say the box being full and not accepting returns. That’s the problem I ran into last night. I couldn’t return my movie. Isn’t that just crazy. I could either return it to another site or keep it another day, pay the charges and they would send me a promo code for another movie. Nope, that wasn’t gonna work for me. So I got 2 movies for my inconvienence. But I did drive all over town to find another place to return it. The first place I went (Kroger) had a red machine that does the same thing, different company. LOL

See it was a boring weekend. This week will most likely be boring too. But next weekend is the game between Ohio State and that team up North. (we don’t say the M word this week) People in Central Ohio are nuts about Michigan week as they call it. (I haven’t figured out how they can call it Michigan week if they can’t say the M word? bwhahaha) And they don’t believe me when I tell them that it’s not the same in Michigan during this week. Of course, this year it may be since this game is all that the Wolverines have to redeem themselves for the dismal season they’re having. Anyway, there’s a big party down at the campground on Sat. So I’ll be freezing my tatas off. Oh the things we do for love.

Hope you all have a great day!

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10. November 2008 by admin.

Hope you had a great one. Ours was very quite. I’d almost have to say that the highlight was grocery shopping on Friday night. Well, it wasn’t the shopping but the result of it. We shop at a place called Giant Eagle, they just opened the store near us about 3 months ago. They have a gas station and offer a discount program where for every $50 you purchase you get 20 cents off a gallon of gas. The discounts are good for 90 days and can accumulate. We’ll I let Shannon use ours on Friday night and he filled up his Bronco (30 gallon tank) and he got gas for 67 cents a gallon. In the summertime we’d put $20 and go about 3 days Well, it got filled for $19.52. I heart Giant Eagle. I’ll be buying all my gift cards there for Christmas shopping. They have Ebay cards, but wouldn’t it be great if they had Paypal cards? I’d save myself a fortune just by using it on all the scrapping stuff I buy. lol

The other highlight was dinner last night. We bought a pork roast and tried a fantastic new recipe. We love to cook in the crockpot and this was custom designed for it. Apple & Sage glazed pork roast. It’s an Emeril recipe. I don’t have it here with me, but I’m thinking I need to share it. But if you really gotta see it, it’s on Foodnetwork.com It was to die for. I do have to say that Shannon is a great crockpot cook. He also does a chicken & noodles that’s awesome.

All my scrapping stuff was done on Friday. I’ve been working on knocking off the challenges over at DSG. Have you been by to check them out yet? It’s a great group of ladies.

Well, it’s time to make the donuts so to say. Hopefully work won’t be too busy today, I have lots to do to finsih up my part of a fanstastic collab I’m working on with Da Wench Kristine. It’s HUGE and very pretty. Keep your eyes open for it.

Amanda, bad officiating. That was a big part of it. I’m so sorry, I really wanted them to go all the way.

Have a great day all.

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7. November 2008 by admin.

I truly believe that is my most used post title ever. lol  It just always seems to fit.   It seems like it’s been a very long week and I think that the time change has just really messed with me.  Hopefully I’ll get over it this weekend with some well deserved rest.  But I have to clean my house first.  Yikes, what a mess it is.  And I get to work tomorrow too.  Fun, fun, fun.  At least it’s only half a day.

I have some more pages to share with you.  The first one is by my other fab CT member Robin.  She was finally able to get her computer woes fixed and is scrapping again.  Woohoo!  This is her daughter and a few of her chickens.  She used my November Rain papers.

The other 2 I did for challenges at the Garden.  The first one is for the lyric challenge.  The lyrics are by Josh Groban.

And this one is for Jenn’s Cottage Garden challenge.  I used my Autumn Orchard papers and the star mat is by Birgit Kerr.

There’s lots of great things going on over at the Garden with challenges and great designers.  Stop by and say hi.  I’m off to change the link for the Daily Petal giveaway.

Hope you enjoy your weekend and scrap happy!

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5. November 2008 by admin.

I have tried to stay away from the political talk here on the blog. I know that not everyone shares my views and that I have readers from outside the states. But today I am full of hope. A hope that together we can get this country turned around and headed back in the right direction. A hope that we can keep our counrty safe but bring our soldiers back home to their families. A hope that every child can indeed grow up to believe that it is possible for them to become President. A hope that we can overcome the label of red state or blue state and become the United States.

And I hope you have a great day!

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31. October 2008 by admin.

One of my favorite sayings is “Man plans and God laughs”.  I’ve found that’s how it usually works in my life.  I got a call from my brother yesterday making sure that I was still planning on going to Michigan.  My sister in law took a fall at work and she’s 8 months preggers.  The fall brought up contractions so she went to the hospital.  Fortunately both her and the baby are fine.  They kept her overnight for observation.  I drove into my brothers instead of mom’s so I could stay with the girls today.  I slept on the couch.  And froze.  I’m very lucky at my house.  It was built in the late 70’s during the energy crisis then and it’s all electric.  I have a heat pump and don’t have to pay for gas.  Now my electric bill is a tad bit high than yours may be but it’s a heck of a lot cheaper than gas heat.  So I don’t sleep well when its cold.  (which is usually always this time of year)  Both my brother and mom are good economic energy savers and it’s 65 degrees in here.   Way toooo cold for me.  Don’t tell him but I turned the heat up.  There are 2 little girls here.  They don’t need to get sick.

Don’t forget about the DSD sale.  All my stuff in both stores is 50% off.  Also over at Wenchd Grafix, the other designers also are have a great sale.  Take a look.  And over at the Garden I have a little giveaway thread going on for my Inky Dinks.

 Just read this thread, leave me a comment and tomorrow morning I will do random draw to give away a set of these.  And don’t forget the first links to the Daily Petals are up.  Check those out here.

Have lots of fun trick or treating tonight.  If I last that long, lol. 

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28. October 2008 by admin.

That I just have to share it with you.

Lynn did this great page of her parents cats.  Hysterical isn’t it.  I love it.  And it wasn’t until I got done leaving love for it over at the Garden that I read she used my Adrift papers.  Stop byand leave her some lovin.  Lynn has gotten her mother into digiscrapping too, which I think is totally awesome.  I’m really looking forward to seeing some of Cathy’s pages too.

Wow, gas is down to $2.32 here in Central Ohio.  I always said it would go down before the election, but I never thought it would go that low.  The news said that it was down to $1.99 in Cincinnati.  Good news for Barb!  Now lets hope it stays there!  Now I can’t be all happy, happy all the time.  Ya all wouldn’t recognize me.  I’m trying not to dwell on it, but I made the mistake of reading my 401K statement for this last quarter.  I would highly advise those of you who haven’t gotten yours yet to act like an ostrich when it comes in.  Luckily I’m still young enough that I have time to rebuild the 24% I loss.  But until things have totally turned around, I’ll stick my head in the sand and ignore those statements.

I have lots of stuff that I’m getting ready to put into the stores.   And while I won’t be around for DigiScrapping Day I’m thinking big sale.  I’ll have more info on it on Thursday.  Can’t wait to go see the girls and go Trick or Treating with them.  The rest of the weekend will be spent packing up my moms house.  Another victim of the economy.  But I’m sure I’ll get a minute or two to jump on line to check out the sales.  More info to follow.

Have a great day!

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27. October 2008 by admin.

On so many fronts.   LOL.

I guess I should pay homage to Amanda and her Penn State football team first.  It was a real heart-breaker for us OSU fans.  But it was a real defensive battle right to the end.  And all the sportscasters and those of us fans in the know (I amaze people with my college football knowledge) said it would come down to whichever QB made a mistake first.  And it just happened to be the true freshman  QB from Ohio State.  I had to feel for the kid, just turned 19 and had the hopes of an entire state resting on his shoulders.  So now, no Big Ten championship or National title hopes for us.  True Big Ten fans stick together and are now rooting for Joe Pa and his Lions to run the table and go all the way to the National Championship game.  Go Joe Pa.  Gotta respect a 81 year old man who still had enough going on to coach a team as well as he does.  It’ll be sad to see him leave.  So hats off Amanda to you and your boys. 

It was also the official end of the camping season.  We closed her up and winterized her for a long 5 months.  Carmen is going through doggie depression.  She does every year.  It’s always a long winter for us all.  And I’d say that fall is officially over too.  They’re calling for a rain/snow mix overnight.  Even though it won’t stick, still the thought of snow.  ugh!

I did a giveaway over at DST and gave out a bunch of copies of 2 paper packs.  Something happened with my 4shared files and neither of them are good links.  I have 6 people out there wondering what kind of idiot I am.  I’ve had lots of problems with 4shared lately and am seriously considering switching.  Anyone have any good programs they like better?

On a much brighter note, I am totally one of the luckiest new designers out there and got THE BEST CT member.  Take a look at what Lynn did with my Mulberry Wine kit. 

That’s her niece.  Isn’t she adorable!!!!!  And what an awesome page Lynn did.  I wish I could find my scrap mojo.  My pages have been less to my liking lately.  But I’ll have new photos coming after this upcoming weekend when I get to take my nieces Trick or Treating.  That may just be what I need.

I’m off to catch up on my emails, blog reading and leaving love for awesome pages at the Garden.  I’m sure I also need to do some laundry too.  Have a great Monday all.

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23. October 2008 by admin.

done by my first official CT member Lynn.  She used my Equinox papers.

Isn’t it gorgeous!!!!  The journaling is from the Lyrics challenge over at DSG.  If you haven’t been by the Garden lately, you really should stop by.  There are some awesome challenges and starting in November, the challenges will be on a points system for gift certificates to the store.  It’s a great way to get your mojo moving, some pages done and get great products that you want in the process.   I actually was able to finish a page yesterday for my November quote challenge.  And it was no easy feat as the font I was trying to use kept crashing my program.  But I finally learned my lesson, save as you go!  But alas, you can’t see it til November first.  Lots and lots of big things for November first and I won’t even be at home.   Going to go trick or treating with the girls and help my mom get the house ready to move.

I don’t know if it’s because it’s October and Halloween is right around the corner or if it’s because there’s nothing on tv on Wed. nights, but I’ve become addicted to Ghost Hunters on SciFi channel.  I watched a 4 hour block of it last night.  The St. Augustine lighthouse was pretty creepy with the very visible shadow looking over the edge of the railing.  Anyway, my tv patterns are getting back into a pretty set schedule again.  Thursday is my busiest night with Survivor, Greys and I’m really starting to get into the new Life on Mars cop show on ABC after Greys.  Great cast with Harvey Kietel and Michael Impiroli and AWESOME soundtrack.  I’m a big sucker for 70’s music.  If you like offbeat cop dramas, go to ABC.com  and check out the first 2 episodes.  It’s got a mystery to it, a little like LOST.

Big game Saturday night in OUR house!  So Amanda watch out. hehehehe

Have a great day all!

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16. October 2008 by admin.

hour bug has gotten me down for at least 48.  I’ll spare you the details, but it’s not been pretty.  And I swear that you have to be a “mom” to know what to do for a situation like this.  I can count on 1 hand the number of times I’ve had this particular bug and I never get it right.  Feed a fever and starve a cold I can do, but B.R.A.T. not so much.

Hope to have some new stuff in the store by mid next week.  And maybe another freebie by this weekend for you.  Until then, I’m just trying to get through the day.

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