Just a few pretty pictures

I finally got a few pretty pictures edited and stuff for online. So, I might as well share them right?
These are really some of my favorites that I've taken lately. I love love love when the flowers and trees start blooming. Fresh flowers in the window cutout above our kitchen sink are definitely a favorite of mine. I'm going to have to get a potted plant or something, cuz it gets too expensive to buy fresh cut flowers every 2 weeks or so.
This one is of a carnation. I cropped in nice and close and I really like the texture and the white tones within it.


This is of a tiger lily. I really hope that Jordan will let me plant a few somewhere in our yard. I just LOVE lilies.


These next to I am definitely printing and hanging up somewhere in the house. I LOVE them. I still can't believe that I actually snapped this picture of the bee. I had to crop in close to get this final shot, but I'm so excited that the bee is IN FOCUS! Lol!


And this one is of one of the big bushes in the front that was her when we bought the house. I'm really not sure what it is, but it blooms so pretty and pink and vibrant each year. I love the way I got this one bunch of blooms in focus and threw the rest out for some nice bokeh.


Not a whole lot else going on. Jordan is heading up to Pittsburgh tomorrow night with a friend to help move his best man into their new house. I'm staying home because I promised Gidget I would come down to VA and go to a Wine Festival with her, which should be a TON of fun. I'm hoping to get some more stuff done around the house, and for the wedding too. I've been putting the wedding invitations together in spits and spurts, and I think it'll make putting them all together much easier. I got a few random projects done this past weekend, so that was good too. But the lists are never ending, lol.

Catch you later :)
~Col

Memorial Day - 2009

(Image by David Goldman, as taken from The Big Picture)
Always remember those who have fallen to protect your freedoms.
God bless America. God bless our troops.

Well well well, long time no see!

This is how it usually goes for me. I blog for a while, then I disappear, then I try again. I fell off the 365 wagon during April. April was ca-razy for me! Our families came down for Easter, work was insane, lots going on. Life in general has gotten a lil busy, and we're not even in the full swing of wedding stuff. I'm working on a better time management schedule for myself. 1 or 2 hours a week doing wedding stuff, 1 night a week editing photos and playing in lightroom, and then working on my hybrid assignments for SSD and the other crafty things I want to do. We'll see how it goes. I did pretty well last week, we'll see how this week goes. We're working 4-10's so we can take friday off to go to Jadyn's college graduation. That cuts into "my time" every night by 2 hours, but we'll see what happens.

Anyway, I figured a good old "From Our Blog to Yours" from SSD would be a good way to get back into the swing of things. So, here you go. My Star Wars name.

Your Star Wars Name Is Colbr Mabro

Your Star Wars Title Is Ydacho of Nadroj

What Is Your Star Wars Name and Title?

We're officially less than 5 months away from the wedding, which is NUUUUUUUTS!!! The bridesmaid dresses have arrived which is SUPER exciting. I need to call the bridal store and find out when my fittings will start, but they've had my dress and veil for a few weeks now. So all that is wonderful. Jordan's mom called last night, and there is potential for a problem with the hotel block we set up, so I need to take care of that this week. I'm working on a mock-up of the favors, and will be ordering the final pieces this week as well. I have half of the pieces of the invitations put together, which is awesome. They don't take long to put together, but I think it'll be easier if I put the different pieces together, and then put the entire invitation together. I just LOVE the invitations, I'm so happy with them.

I think that's enough for now. Hopefully tonight I'll get some more photos from the last few months edited and online so I can share. :)

Have a great day!
~Col

My birthday! And random P365 photos

Hellooooooooo! So, I meant to post, and I meant to post, and I meant to post, and now I'm finally posting :)

Last friday was my birthday (WOOT!!). The big 2-6. It feels no different that 25, lol. Another year down the drain. But, there are lots of awesome things to look forward to this year, so it's all good.
Here's my P365 for friday. We went out to a happy hour with a bunch of friends and had a blast! We don't go out a lot, which we should really work on, but we always have fun when we do. :)


I'm keeping up with Project 365 pretty well so far. The only thing I'm running into, is that I'm so spoiled with my D80, that I don't want to take pictures during the day with my point and shoot, lol. Although that photo above is from my point and shoot, so I shouldn't complain too much. I brought my big camera in to work today so I can get a shot of the ice storm outside. We got some snow yesterday, and then a lot of sleet/ice overnight and into today. I'm gonna run outside in a second and snap a picture before it all melts or something. I do have to say that I LOVE editing my photos in Lightroom now. And the combination of lightroom and PS is just AWESOME!
Here's a sunset from Jan 16th. The windows in my craft space overlook the backyard and face west-ish so the sun sets over there everyday. The winter sunsets seem to be extra bright and gorgeous lately.


Here's a shot that I made vintage-y. It's the view of our parking lot from the stairwell on my floor. The P&S didn't take a great photo, so going vintage was my best option.


My mom gave me 2 of these mugs, and a matching bowl over Christmas. I LOVE it! It's so fun to look down and see a cute lil snowman peeking up at me. The bowl is in the living room with M&M's in it :)


One of my Christmas presents was also this adorable Breast Cancer Mouse :) She sits on my desk at home all cute and fluffy with those feathers. Probably going to retake this one, and move my pen storage out of the way so it's not as distracting.


Tiger had a lot of fun running around outside on sunday morning while Jordan was washing the cars. She's so cute in that jacket when the hood flops forward, and then she was playing on her own tossing the ball around. I just HAD to snap some shots :)
Here, the ball had the audacity to roll down the side of the yard into the driveway. How rude!


This one is funny.


And I LOVE this one, despite it's total lack of focus, lol.


That will be all for now. My mojo took a long walk off a short pier in the beginning of the month and it's starting to bother me. I've gotten 2 hybrid projects done, and I'll post those tomorrow (hopefully). We're driving up to NY tonight so we can go to a tasting at Patriot Hills tomorrow night. So fun!! Have a great day :)

~Col

Puppiesssssssssssssssssssssssss!!!

Ok, so I've got a TON of P365 photos that I finally got off my camera and edited and whatnot. But, it's a lot. And I don't want to bore you. So instead? PUPPIES!!
My girlfriend Sue (the maker of the glorious roasted chicken) seems to have a knack for finding strays. A while ago she found a litter of abandoned Labradoodles in the gravel pit behind her house. She nursed those babies back to health, found them homes, and kept one for herself cuz she'd grown so attached. Last spring she found a huge male dog, near death from starvation wandering in an empty ball field near her house (that I drive past 2 times a day!). If she hadn't gone for a drive that morning, he probably wouldn't have survived. She brought him in, nursed him back to health, found him a good home. Are we sensing a pattern? I thought so.

A few weeks ago her husband was at the grocery store and he spotted a starving femail running around the parking lot. She was VERY friendly and running up to people (looking for food I'm sure), but since she's a pit bull, people were terrified of her. So, he scooped her up and brought her home. They thought that she had just birthed a litter of pups as her teats were hanging really low. They started feeding her and she fattened up FAST. Too fast. She was still pregnant, she hadn't given birth yet. So, about 3 weeks ago, she gave birth to a litter of 9 puppies. 9!! Apparently it was clear that it was not her first birthing, as she took everything in stride.

So, this past saturday I stopped by with coffee and donuts to gab and catch up and of course, see the puppies! Momma has been named Trixie and is the tiniest, sweetest little thing ever. She ran right up to me and jumped to see what I was carrying and say hello. And the puppies, ooooooh the puppies! I've never seen puppies so teeny tiny before. The one that Sue claimed for me was OBVIOUSLY the loudest one of the bunch ;)
Here, are my 3 favorite shots. Thank goodness I shot in RAW cuz the light was really low (even for my 50mm f/2.8 all the way open), but Lightroom saved the day :)
They were SO cute. They kept burrowing underneath each other into a big pile of wriggling, squealing, wrinkly cuteness :)


All piled up.


And this guy was just the CUTEST. He looked so content laying there half under the pile, half out of it.


I so wish that Jordan would let me bring one home. I want Tiger to have a brother SO BAD, but he's really against a 2nd dog right now. Well, ever really. But I'm hoping that I can wear him down if given enough time, lol.

A lot of my 365 photos from last week feature Tigah-now. She's just so dang cute I can't help myself! Here are a few :)
She took a nice little nap while the Giants were losing to the Eagles.


She finished off her month of antibiotics for Lyme Disease.


She hijacked my spot in bed while I was in the shower.


And she loved on her Daddy :)


I think that's enough for today :) I'm all caught up on my photos so look for another post with some of them soon. :)
Have a good night and a good day!

~Col

This could become a problem....

Seriously. My love for all things crafty will probably be my undoing. I need to learn to finish one project before I try and start another, lol. I bought a TON of fabric last night for 3 new projects. But first, I need to make 2 of the projects I started for SSD. Oy, lol. I just get so excited about an idea that I run out to start it, and then realize crap, I can't do that yet!

The other problem is going to be that I am NOT good about taking my photos off my camera for P365. I don't like to upload photos 1 by 1, I like to do it in bunches. I think that for this project though, that's really gonna make the project hard for me. I still haven't uploaded my photos from the end of last week. So I need to work on that.

Not a whole lot going on otherwise. I'm really busy at work, which is good and bad, lol. Good because I'm grateful to have a job in this crazy economy, bad because I don't like being SO crazy busy. I feel overwhelmed sometimes. I'm working on a plan set submittal, but this is the first time my boss is letting me do all the checking on it first (usually I print it all and he makes the corrections). So I'm a little stressed about that, but I do have to learn it to grow and move up in the company. Such is the life of a grown up right?

I can't leave without posting some more LO's. This one I started over a month ago. I redid it like 7 times before I finally bought the kit I ended up using. I REALLY like the way it turned out.


This one is for my Project 365 photobook. I'm going to use Viovio to print it since Shutterfly can't handle the number of pages I'm hoping to do. I'm going to make it's an 8.5x8.5 pro bound book hopefully. I want something nice that I can put out on the coffee table next year :) I'm not sure this style is one that I want to keep throughout the whole book, but it's a LO done and that's all that matters right now, lol.


That's all for today :) I'll be back soon with more 365 photos to share, and hopefully my first official project as a Hybridbabe for SSD!! WOOT!!

Have a wonderful day :)
~Col

Oh My Stinkin Heck!!!!!

I am having the BEST WEEK EVER!!!

Ok, so Monday blew. I was cranky, I did NOT want to be back at work, and my boss drove me a little insane. Jordan and I were both really snippy with each other too, which always gets to me. I haaaaaaaaaate fighting with him or being mad at him. So Monday was not so hot.

Tuesday was better. I was in a decent mood, I rode the bike for 20 minutes (WOOT!), we had a good dinner. I bought myself a custom font from Darcy Baldwin @ SSD, and I was all excited to get it made. Life was good.

Then came Wednesday. Ooooh wednesday. I have a great group of friends whom I met on myspace a few years back. We've had our fair share of ups and downs and drama-rama's, but there's a core group of us who have always stuck together and been really close. For the past few years we've decided to do a Secret Santa to keep costs down for everyone during the holidays. Well my SS informed me of herself, and she happened to be my good friend Sue who lives like 2 miles away. So instead of buying me something, she gave me the best gift ever. A huge home cooked meal for Jordan and I, delivered to our house!! She made us a delicious oven roasted chicken (which Jordan LOVED so I have to get her recipe, lol) with carrots and potatoes, a salad, biscuits, an appetizer of cheese and crackers, and a dessert of angel food cake with vanilla topping! FREAKING DELICIOUS!
So as if that wasn't enough for the day, Jordan surprised me. He knew I really wanted this dinner to be just for us, to share together, by ourselves. Well his brother was still in the house, but while I was down the hall he set the table in the dining room, turned down off the lights, and lit candles and opened a bottle of wine. It was just exactly what I needed from him amid the stress of life at home as it is currently. He really surprises me sometimes and sweeps me off my feet all over again. We had a wonderful dinner and enjoyed each other's company both during and after :P
As if that wasn't enough to keep me happy for several days, I got the GREATEST PM ever later that night. From Robin Carlton, the owner of Sweet Shoppe Designs, asking me to (finally) be a Hybridbabe!!! EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!! See, I'm even up on the staff page (scroll down, bottom left corner)!! I've talked to Robin a lot in the last year, to find ways to improve myself to try and make the team. SSD is my digi-home, and to be on the site team is truly a dream come true. I've been waiting for almost a year, but it was 100% worth the wait!! The funny thing is that after the last round of rejection, I had decided to "give up" on making the team in a way. Not literally give up, but try to not make it my main focus and just do what I do because I love to do it. Well boy did that pay off! LOL! I'm seriously seriously, SO excited to be an even bigger part of the most amazing digi-scrapping community out there. There are some big things planned for the future and I'm so excited to get to be a part of them from the start!! So Wednesday was amazing. I was literally like a kid on Christmas eve that night. So excited I couldn't sleep!

Thursday was excellent. I got set up in the "behind the scenes" forums at SSD and worked on catching up things. Robin announced that myself and another wonderful scrapper, Jen Tapler, had joined the team, and I basked in the awesomeness that was my life. And then the next most awesome thing happened. Darcy finished my font!!! I consider my handwriting to be a mess. It never looks the same way twice, which makes it rather difficult to create a sample LOL! But Darcy persevered, and here's my font!! I LOVE it!!


Friday was excellent because a)it was friday, but also because of b) we booked the flights for our honeymoon!! WOOT!! We're flying into Paris on the 13th and out of Milan on the 30th. 17 days in Europe!!!! OMG I'm SO freaking excited.

So yea, best freaking week ever. 2009 is off to a very very good start. Fingers crossed it stays that way for a while :)

Ok, time for some 365 photos. I'm almost done with my LO for week 1, which is good since week 2 ended today :P But I'll talk about the LO when I post it.

Day 6 was Tuesday, which was the first day I used the new exercise bike.


Day 7 was Sue's glorious oven roasted chicken.


Day 8 was my debut on the SSD staff page!!!


Day 9 and 10 are still in lightroom. I'll post them soon. :)
I spent a lot of today organizing my scrap space AGAIN. But it's got some fun new things in it thanks to some metal bins from the new tv stand that Jordan didn't want to STAY in the tv stand. So I took them :) Now I have bins for my rub ons, my acrylic stamps, my endless amounts of chipboard, and my card bases! I'm loving the way it's working into my current system so well!! WOOT! Plus, that means my desk is almost cleared off and I can get back to crafting! WEEEEEE! I've got some card sets that I want to make for friends, and that's my first project :)

Ok, enough rambling for tonight. Have a good rest of the weekend everyone!
~Col

Helloooooooo 2009!

Phew! I finally grabbed a second to get this written and posted. The holidays were great. Super busy, and too much traveling, but great. :) We got an awesome exercise bike from my parents, and I got Lightroom 2.0 from Jordan's parents! WOOT! So exciting, it's my new favorite camera accessory, lol.

Again, this year for SERIOUS, I'm doing Project 365. I say for serious, because SSD is playing along too and has a whole forum set up for it! WOOT! Now lots of my friends are doing it, and I'll have oodles of motivation. And to share, here are my first 5 pics :)

Tiger LOVES to lay in front of the wood stove when we visit Jordan's parents in the winter. She lays there until she's so hot she can't stand it any longer, goes and cools off for a few minutes, and then goes back and lays down again. This night, the fire was apparently too low for her, because she was practically laying underneath it, lol.


Day 2, playing with my favorite new toys :)


Day 3, her pathetic/sad/stop taking my picture face.


I spent some time on sunday, Day 4, going through piles of scrapbooking magazines and pulling out inspiration from them. I pull articles and layouts to lift for those times when my mojo is running low.


Yesterday we took down the tree and I took down most of the decorations in the house. I don't have an ornament organization box, so the bulbs all just go in one big rubbermaid bin :)



So 2008 went way too fast. It was a good year, but I really can't believe it's gone already! But the good news is, WE ARE GETTING MARRIED THIS YEAR!!!!!

Can you tell I'm excited?? We ordered our invitations while we were home in NY for Christmas, and I'm SO excited to get them in. They are so perfect and elegant and wonderful. STOKED! We did hit a snag with the hotel situation, which is a huge bummer. Apparently all the hotels in the area are WAY overpriced, so guests are gonna have to travel a bit I think. So bummed about that. We'll just have to see what happens I suppose.

Since we got the exercise bike for Christmas, I'm hoping to make a solid effort at exercising more this year. I figure if I can't lose weight for the wedding, then it's not meant to be. Jordan loves my body, all the pressure definitely comes from me. I'm not crazy, trying to fit into a size 2 or something. I just want to lose 20 pounds, which would get me down to a good healthy size. That's all I want, is to be more healthy. I'm working on taking multi-vitamins, and drinking more water every day. I hope to use the bike 3 days a week and try and do pilates the other days. It'd be nice to keep that plan going with the bike, because then when I start training for the 3Day (2010) I can walk the other days of the week like I'm suppose to. That's the plan anyway :p The best laid plans of mice and men......

So getting healthy is one goal for this year. Another goal is to really really really work on my photography. I would really love to eventually (like, a ways down the line) get into photography as a business or a side business. Holly McCraig has a dog portraiture business called The Little Dog Smiled. SO AWESOME! I mean that, THAT would be what I would want to do. Run around taking pictures of awesome dogs all the time. PERFECT!

Mmm....ok, I think I'm done rambling for today. Hopefully I'll be back again soon :)
Have a great day!!

~Col

Poop Face

Yes, you read that correctly. Poop face. (Yes, yes I'll explain, just hold your horses!)

We're doing a monthly team challenge over on Bree's Team Blog called Mix It Up. Once a month, we pick a template, and then scramble it all up and make something TOTALLY different with it, and then show the LO's off. A lot of people think that once they use a template, that's it, game over. NO WAY MAN!! That's what we aim to show you with the Mix It Up posts (the challenge will be up sometime today). Kim picked a LO from Bree's newest Collection, #23:


As soon as I saw the 3 smaller photos, I knew I wanted to do a LO with my scanned pics of my brother and sister and I as babies. So next, I hunted for pics of us as babies in similar positions. I had a few to choose from for my brother and sister, but there was really only one for me. So, I edited the pics, changed them to a sepia tone to match the kit I was using ("Heart Strings" by Laurie Ann) and went to town. I REALLY like how it turned out. I used all the pieces that came in the template and didn't even resize or change them. I just moved them into different positions (and changed the large photo to a block in the center. Here's the LO:



So I'm in the top left, Caitlin is top right, and Patrick is on the bottom (hence the little monogram type letters on the photos). Now, look at that face I am making. If that is not a "I'm pooping" baby face, then I don't know what is. I STILL cannot stop laughing just looking at it!! What a moment to catch on film, thanks Mom and Dad! Hahahahahaha! Oh goodness, I love it.

So last weekend Jordan went through the GIANT PILE of clothes that has been sitting in the corner of our bedroom for over a year now, waiting to be sorted and taken over to Goodwill. I decided that instead of holding onto some 10 pairs of jeans that no longer fit, I was going to donate them. I'm tired of the subconscious pressure I put on myself to lose weight every single time I opened the closet and saw those jeans. So, peace out jeans! Hello clear conscience!
I bought 2 new pairs of American Eagle jeans, and I feel like a new person. Yes, they're a size 12 and it still makes me cringe a little to think that (I thought 10 was bad enough), but they FIT! Comfortably! No doing lunges in the morning in a lame attempt at stretching them out to make them easier to get on! I feel good in the morning. It feels awesome.
Yea, I still wanna lose weight. We're getting an exercise bike for Christmas and I hope to get myself on it M/W/F and really make an effort at it. But you know what? If I don't, I'm not gonna let it get to me. I look HAWT in my wedding gown right now, as a size 10/12. Yea, it would be nice to lose 10lbs (more like 20 but whatever), but I figure if I don't, and my wedding isn't motivation enough, then it's not meant to be. Jordan loves me despite the size of my jeans, and that's all that really matters.

So, if you're hanging onto old clothes because you plan on losing weight to fit back into them, just get rid of them. There are plenty of ppl out there who can put them to good use RIGHT NOW, and when you do lose the weight, do you really want to wear old stuff? Heck no! You want fun new clothes for yourself! So let goooooo of the baggage!!

So in crafty news, I followed along on Tim Holtz' blog for his 12 days of tags (I triiiiied to get on here to post about it, and then never did, oops). Absolutely amazing and inspiration stuff here folks. Makes me want to run out and buy every single he makes or touches. For reals. It also makes me want to run home and get my hands all dirty and play :) I bought a little wooden house back in October to make a Haunted House with, but now I think I'm going to make a "gingerbread" house with it instead. HOPEFULLY I can work on that sometime this week. But I suppose we shall see.

Oh, and remember that whole "I'm going to bed early" thing from yesterday? Totally didn't happen. I got sucked into finishing that LO and was up til 11:30. Awesome. LOL! At least I'm only working Monday and Tuesday next week, so I'll have lots of time to catch up on my sleep :)

Ok, I think that's all I wanted to say today. Or at least it needs to be so I can finish off this plan sheet. :p
Have a great day!
~Col

What? 2 days in a row?

Saaaa-weeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!!

I'm just tired of working on this plan set. Drafting gets to me after a while. So, I came here to be a little random for a bit.

1.) I bought this adorable hat off etsy ( crafttealady.etsy.com is the shop I got it at). I wasn't sure it would look good on me, but it was red and cream and screamed my name until my willpower crumbled and I bought it. I fought the urge for a good 2 minutes! :p Turns out though? I look freaking CUTE in this hat! And I don't care what Jordan thinks, I'm wearing it all the time now. Well, not all the time, but you know what I mean. :)



2.) I really like my most recent LO. I didn't even know I had gotten that smaller photo, and I totally love it. I'm gonna print it and frame it and stick it somewhere I can see it everyday :) The kit is Preppy Autumn by Traci Reed and it's one of my most favorite kits of hers!


3.) Jordan bought a huge tv for the bedroom this week. Found a deal he couldn't pass up, and we just got our bonus checks from work, so, he bought it. It's 46 freaking inches! Unnecessary for a bedroom I think, but whatever. I know better than to argue with him on some things. I voiced my opinion on the size and it was disregarded and that's life. And besides, who complains about a pimp 46" tv?!?! I'll just be buying one of the things on my "Camera stuff I HAVE TO HAVE" list next month for my birthday :)

4.) What the fuck kind of time warp do you get thrown into when you graduate college? CHRISTMAS IS IN 8 FREAKING DAYS!! When did that happen??? Thank god for a free month of Amazon Prime and free 2 day shipping, that's all I'm gonna say on that matter.

5.) If I don't get Tiger to the vet this week, I'm gonna hurt myself. She's overdue for shots by about 2 weeks, which isn't a big deal, except one of them is her rabies shot. Which I find mildly important. *pauses* She has an appt at 11:10 on saturday morning. Done. Excellent.

6.) I've been EXHAUSTED lately. Staying up too late is not good for me, especially not for like a week straight. I'll be going to bed early tonight, come hell or high water!

7.) I never shared this LO and it's FREAKING ADORABLE. So I'm sharing it now. The kit is "Jingle Baby" by Kristin Cronin-Barrow and Meg Mullens. Isn't my lil bro CUTE?!



8.) I think that's all for today. It was extra random, you'll need time to recover. ;)

Have a great day!
~Col