Week in the Life – Monday 8/17

I wasn’t going to do a Week in the Life project this year….last year my heart wasn’t really in it for some reason and I abandoned the project after a day or two.  It’s OK to drop projects and change gears, wasn’t working, move on.  This year, I have too many unfinished projects, too many things in the air and no sense of completion….perfect!  Let’s take on another project.  My goal this year…. write every day, take a few photos, post to my blog.  It’s Wednesday and I’m posting Monday so here goes 😉

MONDAY

****And I realized when I looked at the photos I’d taken, all 8 of them, that there were no people in them.  Was it because I’d decided late in the game to do witl and hadn’t “prepped”?  Or, was it because this is what a large part of my day looks like being the Domestic Goddess with two kids in school and a more than full time working hubby….that there just isn’t that many people around?   Think I need to think about this a little more.  A lot of isolation, not necessarily a great thing.

This week is the last week of summer vacation for us.  It is completely depressing, I am happy with the school they go to, but at this time of year I’m ready for them to have an extra week or two of summer as the other schools around us do.  It is especially bittersweet as they are going into HIGH SCHOOL next week (not sure why I have to capitalize that when I write it), I have been waffling between disbelief and excitement for them all month.

In the spirit of “last week before summer vacation” I made the girls get up at 9am even though we didn’t have to leave the house until almost 11.  Groan, moan and they’re up.  After being a slug for the greater part of the summer, I got up with Charlie a little after 6am and made him his tea to take with him to work.  I have to admit, I get waaaaay more done in a day when I am up at 6am vs. 9am.

The girls had soccer practice this morning so I picked up Kenzie & Peyson and dropped everyone at the field, then hightailed it to the Apple Store to pick up a new wireless router (ours was ooold as I realized) and then to Best Buy for network cable and other tech stuff all to be used as part of the upgrading the wi-fi signal project.  Just made it back to soccer in time to get everyone, drop everyone off, bring the girls home to get their bathing suits and some Elio’s pizza to take to Kenzie’s pool…pick up Lauren on the way over and drop everyone off to swim.  Lucky that Janice will bring everyone home.  I’m so so thankful to have a group of girlfriends who live nearby and who like to share in the kid-schlepping chores!

photo 5 edited

After the pool, the girls have to do their “concussion training” for their school soccer team, I get them the links to the site and they each curl up on their beds in the a/c  go through the course.

photo 4

Also in homage to getting back to a schedule, I wanted to get back into the habit of “money monday”, doing the bills/paperwork/greasing the cogs that run this show.  I know if I do this every monday, it won’t take very long and I will have a far better grasp on money, projects, and to-do’s and won’t be wondering if I called the chimney guy or where the paper was with the deposit on it.

photo 1

In the spirit of trying something new, I tried the “deposit by phone” app with our bank and snapped a photo of the check, entered some info and away it went!  Too bad I can’t get cash out of my phone, save me a trip to the cash machine.  I spent hours on this project but managed to get a lot of things cleared out, ticked off, paid and filed.

photo 6 edited

In an effort to clean out the fridge, I made grilled lamb tips from pache’s, a spinach pinwheel dish to use up the puff pastry and good old zucchini cakes from our frozen garden zucchini.  Round it out with sliced tomatoes from the garden and call it good!!

photo 2

After dinner, Charlie worked on our taxes and the girls read their summer reading book “1984”.  They are under strict orders that they can’t go camping this weekend with their friend unless the reading and all the “entries” they have to do are completely done, printed out and in their backpacks ready to hand in on Monday!  Charlie gave me my own “homework” of things to work on to get our taxes in order, which I’ll work on this week.  I had some more paperwork/computer stuff to take care of before joining him for sliced plums.

photo 3

We have been ending up the evenings in front of the TV usually watching sports or “Big Bang Theory” re-runs.    It is nice to come together at the end of the day and hang our for awhile.  Gwen went to bed early but Lily got some ice cream and hung out with us for awhile watching TV.  It’s still weird that they don’t go to bed at 8pm anymore, its fun to hang out but I sometimes miss grown-up evening time.  As we get closer to Monday, bedtimes will be dialed back toward 9.  This summer I’ve also been having Lily do the evening dog routine of pill/food/outside then put her to bed in her crate.  Shadow likes the routine and I like not forgetting to put her out until I’m over-ready to go to bed!  Books and crosswords for us then lights out, Charlie at around 11 and me around 11:40…need to dial back bedtime for ourselves as well!

 

a title and a tagline

Fortunately for procrastinating me, the lovely people at WordPress are running their “blogging 101” class again this month.  I’m hoping to pick up some tips and tricks about running a blog both for my blog and the website that I administer for our church  (fumcmelrose.com, come check us out!).

The second day assignment was to work on a title and a tagline.  Honestly, I like my title and tagline.  When I was trying out different titles, I emailed a Creative friend of mine with my list and asked which he liked best.  He replied that “Triggsey” fit my brand the best.  BRAND!  I have a BRAND I tell you!! Yup, Triggsey has been my brand since the halcyon days of the early ‘80s at Syracuse University.  It must be my brand because it is emblazoned on the back of my official sorority drinking mug.

as always…dog approved

as always…dog approved

“Triggsey” just kind of became my nickname at school, I have honestly no idea how it happened….it could have started with the fact there there were four women with the first name “Sue” living in the sorority house my first year there, so we all had to go by last names and “Triggsey” I guess is the cuter version of Triggs.  So It kinda stuck and I kinda liked it and there it is.  Of course then I find out several years after college that my friends weren’t so original and that my Dad’s nickname is Triggsey…fancy that, same last name, same nickname.  So Triggsey it is!

As to the tag line, I didn’t have one for a long while and I played around with a few different ones and nothing really felt right.  Then I thought about what my passion is, which of course is making things, and how much I love it and ta-da….”Joy in the Making” the tagline was born.  I like it, it’s upbeat, it’s happy, it’s slightly aspirational, I think that you have to smile when you say it (go ahead try and frown and say it…doesn’t work does it?!).  What more could you want from a tag line?!

Now, if I can just get around to the technical part of “pointing” my url the right way so it just reads “triggsey.com” we’ll be all set.

Thanks for stopping by, does your title and tag have a story?

Blogging interrupted … 

…by a desperate need to clean up my studio   
Dumping ground…sound familiar?? Time to clear it all off and tidy it all up. Huge list of projects yet to tackle and no space to work in eeek! Wish me luck, I’m going in! 

Layout a day for Lent complete!!

 

Tonight I just finished my last layout for my layout a day during lent challenge. I actually made more layouts than I had planned and will post another day on that. 

I’m very happy that I was able to fulfill my goal with only one layout half-done and finished the next day. I’m very happy with doing something positive and creative as a Lenten practice. 

Now, for some sewing!

Happy Easter and Passover everyone… Enjoy your Easter candy!  

A page a day for Lent

List-photo

It all started quite innocently enough.  I was chatting with our new pastor at church, we were talking about art and making things and what we do, and she mentioned that she had made a collage a day for lent last year.  hmmmm interesting.  You see a) I am not a terribly religious person b) I grew up presbyterian and we did not observe lent in any participatory way (my mother thought that was only for catholics) c) have I mentioned I’m not a terribly religious person?  Pastor Stacy talked about adding a practice during lent, rather than just always focusing on sacrifice.  That, I thought was very interesting, never had I heard about adding something, it was always about punishment.  So I go to thinking about what I could do that would be realistic and meaningful to me, and I came up with doing a scrapbook page a day every day during lent.

I have done layout a day challenges successfully several times in the past, so I knew I could get through 30 days with out too much craziness, but 47 is more challenging.  I decided to take it on.  I’m keeping track just so I don’t make myself crazy.  I include traditional “scrapbook layouts” as well as mini-books (December Daily) and Project Life pages under the umbrella of Scrapbook Layouts …I should really call it just Memory Keeping.  Anyway, I’m happy to report that I am on track.  I had a minor glitch a few saturdays ago when I had a layout 3/4 finished on my desk, then life happened, the day got super busy, friends came over to exclaim over the hole in the dining room wall (that’s another post) and have a little hangout and before you knew it, it was almost midnight.  So 3/4 of a layout that day…but, I did not just throw in the towel.  The next day, I got up early, finished the layout and got back on track with one layout every day.

Working on this project has helped me streamline my process(more fodder for another post) and honestly, kept the idea of lent more at the front of my feeble little brain rather than floating around the ether.  Now that it’s Holy Week, I’m coming to the end of my project, which will be Easter Sunday.  Do I keep going, or leave it at 47 consecutive layouts (plus an extra 7 I made at the crop on Saturday)???  Can’t decide but the feeling of getting projects done and memories recorded is pretty darned awesome!  I’ll keep you posted!  Are you working on any long-term memory keeping projects?