SNAP 1 - scrapbooking share

I am going to try to play along with Helena's SNAP meme this year.  So my first entry is a set of four scrapbooking related shares. I "scrapped" all through the holidays: a 30 Days of Thankful album in November, a December Reflections (my own version of JYC this year) in December, and finishing off my 2015 OLW album.  However, I didn't manage to share any of it here on my blog. Rather than trying to catch up with all of those pages, here's a representative sampling:

From my 30 Days of Thankful album

From my December Reflections album - this was the 26th & 27th.

My final photo spread in OLW. That is a picture of the Christmas card I made this year. It turned out to be so much work (I started in October) that only 14 lucky folks got one. And can I just say... SIMPLE is going to be my card-making mantra from here on out!

My final gratitude spread. I love the way this album turned out and am so glad to have documented these things all year!

Hopefully my future SNAP posts will be more in line with Helena's meme, but I really wanted to share these and, you know, two birds...

Saying Goodbye to 2015

2015 was my year to "Thrive".  In some respects, I was successful, in others, not so much. But when I look back on the year as a whole, it was a good year.  Not great, but good.

2015 was not the year I lost a lot of weight, to the contrary (and this is the really bad part), I steadily gained 14 pounds over the course of the year.  But in terms of health - I worked with a chiropractor until insurance stopped paying the bills, I started a fitness class, and I went to physical therapy to deal with the radiating pain caused by ridiculously tight neck muscles. I attended all the necessary doctors appointments and testing.  So I did address my health, just not in the way I originally intended.

Thanks to Plan to Eat I have made weekly meal planning into a habit and streamlined grocery shopping as well. I LOVE this program and can't recommend it highly enough.  Knowing at the beginning of each week what is for dinner each day has really simplified my life!

2015 was a great year for travel - Baltimore, Texas, Ocean City NJ, Kansas City MO -  and for meeting up with Blog Friends - I met up with Karen and with Melissa (twice!).

In 2015, I made some progress with decluttering (especially in terms of paperwork in the office!) but I have a long way to go! You'd never know to look around my home that we donated literally multiple van loads worth of stuff to Care & Share. But every space that gets tackled is a small victory and makes me feel lighter.

I set a goal at the beginning of 2015 to read 12 books during the year.  In fact, I managed to read 24 books! I also set a goal to try a new recipe each month. I think I was successful at least 10 out of 12 months.

I definitely didn't "play every day" in 2015. In fact, play and art in general took a huge back seat to opening and running our booth at Black Rose Antiques and Collectibles. And the jury is still out on how long that will last.  We renewed our lease through the end of March and are waiting to see how sales do in this first quarter.  We had fairly brisk sales through the holiday shopping season, at least one retail theft that we know of, and other minor problems that make us question if we are in the right place. But we continue for now.

All things considered, I'm happy to let 2015 go and ready to embrace 2016 with open arms. Stay tuned.

Me On Monday

I'm sitting here at the office, in the middle of the Support Center Department, listening to all the employees on the phone.  I literally can't hear myself think there is so much chatter.  Our office holiday party starts at 5 p.m., which is my reason for being in the office on a Monday.   I'll be happy to have that get underway!

Our weekend was fairly quiet. Temps a little colder, but they are going back up as the week progresses. We are expecting rain for the next several days and 70 degrees F on Christmas Eve. That is literally unheard of in these parts.  But it seems to be a similar story in lots of places this year.  So despite the weather wherever you are, Merry Christmas!

Me On... Wednesday

I approached this week with the best of intentions, but once again I'm fashionably late to the party.  I just hope everyone hasn't gone home already! Here I am waving hello to Sian and her merry band of Monday-ers from a warm Wednesday evening in the Eastern U.S.

The weekend was unseasonably warm with temperatures in the upper 60's (breaking records for three straight days) - that's roughly 20 degrees celsius for all my friends across the pond.  Jay and I got to attend an outdoor flea market for what will likely be the last time this year, but we thoroughly enjoyed it. I'm taking advantage of the good weather while we can, knowing full well we are going to pay for it come January.

Although we have had a few mornings of frost, necessitating scraping ice off windshields, this all burns off by 10:00 a.m.  In any event, there won't be any white Christmas around here!

That didn't stop us from finally getting some ornaments hung on the tree.  Even without the snow, it starting to look a lot like Christmas!

THRIVE - November

I'm trying to stay accountable to myself for the things I have set out to do. THRIVE is a big word. This is what thriving looked like in November...

1. Read A Book:  In November I finished Rising Strong by Brene Brown.  It was a good read but not (IMHO) as strong as her other books.  I'd highly recommend The Gifts of Imperfection if you haven't read Brene Brown yet but are thinking about it! 

2.  Try A New Recipe:   In November I tried a recipe for crock pot Sesame Chicken.  It was a complete and utter failure, well unless you really love the taste of soy sauce, which I don't.  I still need to find some good crock pot recipes that aren't roast or stew.

3.  Declutter:  If the van load of STUFF I took to Care & Share yesterday is any indication, November was a banner month for decluttering. Two entire Rubbermaid totes of former "guest" bedding plus a lot of miscellaneous Twin XL college bedding, a chunk of my winter wardrobe, a bunch of Jay's old computer textbooks... so glad to have that stuff out of the house!

4.  Complete An Unfinished Project:  My UFO was the long-procrastinated clean out of our basement storage room which was the source of a lot of the items being decluttered in November..

5. Improve Flexibility - um, yeah, about that....  

6. Scrapbooking - My Favorite Five - I signed up for LOAD216, so I know I'll be scrapbooking in January and February.  Not even going to try to do anything beyond my December Reflections to finish out 2015.

7.  Photography - November was a lot better. Photos of the changing leaves and fall decor actually happened, as well as Jay's annual birthday photo!

8.  Art Journaling - um, not so much.

9.  On the Wellness front - I completed physical therapy and graduated myself right  after Thanksgiving.  I'm still hanging in with the Intro to Fitness class, trying my best to keep up with the sadist instructor.   I'll be starting with a personal trainer that I like and trust in late January.  So I'm still trying.  Two steps forward, one step (or two or three) back. That's the way it goes.  

My November gratitude page.

Me On Monday

The weeks come and go and honestly my life is so busy and full, I plan my Me On Monday posts in my head. Then Monday comes and goes and the post doesn't get done and before I know it another week has flown by!

This past weekend... Saturday saw some great thrifting at a local senior center indoor flea market, followed by a lot of prepping and pricing to get everything ready to add to the booth. Then on Sunday a seriously fast-paced round of adding items and rearranging the booth ... in 20 minutes or less... so I could meet the rest of the family in downtown Allentown for this:

Can I just say that Cirque Du Soleil really puts on a FANTASTIC show?!  The lighting and costumes were phenomenal. The acrobatics weren't quite as death-defying as some of the stuff I've seen, but there was so much of it going on it was often hard to know where to look. And even though our seats were very much to the side of center stage, Cirque had it set up and choreographed to play quite nicely to all areas of the theater. If you are interested, the show is still touring throughout the U.S. and Canada through September 2016.

This week I'm hoping to get my Thrive post up and get all my Christmas prep DONE - Becca comes home for Winter break on Thursday and Rachel on Saturday, so I don't have a lot of time left to make Christmas happen!  What are you doing this week?

Waving hello to Sian and all the Mondayers.

THRIVE - September/October

I'm trying to stay accountable to myself for the things I have set out to do. THRIVE is a big word. This is what thriving looked like in September and October...

1. Read A Book:  In September I read The Infinite Sea, the second in the 5th Wave series by Rick Yancey.  I'm really looking forward to the third book!  I started Rising Strong by Brene Brown in October, but haven't yet finished it.

2.  Try A New Recipe:   In September I tried Chicken Marsala, and in October I did  Cinnamon Apple Porkchops.  Both very tasty!

3.  Declutter:  I've continued working on decluttering my digital scrapbooking supplies  At the end of August, I had 105 GB, 63,966 files in 3367 folders in that section of my external hard drive.  As of today,  I am at 98.3 GB, 59,364 files in 2919 folders.  I'm not done yet, but I consider this substantial progress! Another 3700 files gone even while I'm purchasing and downloading new stuff!

I also finally mailed a couple of packages to friends of things I had been meaning to mail out for months.

4.  Complete An Unfinished Project:  In September we finally opened our shop at Black Rose - that was a huge accomplishment.  No big UFO for October.

5. Improve Flexibility - I haven't even had the heart to do measurements in the past two months. I'll start working on this again soon.  

6. Scrapbooking - My Favorite Five - hasn't happened.

7.  Photography - other than a handful of photos taken on various trips, not much progress in September and October. BUT I'm trying to change that in November, so maybe I'll have better news to report by year end!

8.  Art Journaling - hasn't happened.

9.  On the Wellness front - Along with the diagnosis of cervical spondylosis (osteoarthritis - degenerative changes in the cervical spine) came physical therapy.  I'm working on improving the range of motion in my neck and loosening up the ridiculously tight musculature.  The good news is that the radiating symptoms down my left arm have virtually disappeared after causing me trouble for four solid months.  Four hours driving my offspring to college call still trigger it, but otherwise it seems to be okay.

I started back with an Intro to Fitness class.  The instructor is a complete sadist and the class is being taught well above my current fitness level.  I'm going to keep going (and modifying everything) until I've used up my pre-paid card class and then I'll be looking for something more in line with my current capabilities.  In the meantime, at least I'm moving!

I'm also thrilled that Cathy Zielski plans to teach another year long version of Move More Eat Well for 2016.  I need the accountability!

 September's One Little Word assignment was to write a letter to ourselves about our interaction with our word.  I made a pocket to slip mine into!

 Visit with Sarah to the Maryland Renaissance Faire

 My September Gratitude page

 October - LOTS of travel!  And something very daring - I took myself out to see the musical Wicked while I was in Kansas City.  All by myself! I had never seen it and I truly loved it.

My October Gratitude page.  We skipped out on Halloween this year and went to dinner and a movie just to avoid having to pass out candy. I'm such a scrooge! But honestly it was wonderful and there were a lot of other older couples doing the same thing - the theater was packed!