Time for School

I have school in about two hours so I'll have to make this quick :)
I received my first email from Karen in San Antonio! Here's a picture of Karen with her Mission President and his Wife. They are like her second parents when she's on her mission. They make sure she is always safe and protected.

Karen said she's doing well and she loves teaching people! This is going to help her alot becuase she wants to be an elementary school teacher. The only thing she said she doesn't like are all the bugs lol. She says she has gotten a bunch of mosquitos bites just like when we would go to the philippines when we were younger. I'll have to send her some bug spray.

Here's another layout I did at the cha crop. I was ecstatic when I won this new Pink Paislee line, that I made this layout that night at the crop. I really like how it turned out. I'm thinking I may add a title though on the right side of the picture. What do you think? And maybe a better picture of this layout. I'll work on that :)

I Love Sundays!

After church today I spent time with Charlie's family. We ate dinner together and enjoyed the Asendorf boys love of remote-control cars! we sat out on the grass in the front yard and watched. I love seeing Kimmy on Sundays, Charlie's sister-in-law. She's funny, easy to talk to, and she reminds me alot of my sister. It's like I gained a replacement sister for the time being lol. I'm glad she moved here from Utah.

Sundays are one of my favorite days!
Reasons being:

1. it's part of the "two-fold weekend".
2. I don't have to work.
3. I have the wonderful blessing of going to church.
4. I always learn something new.
5. I study about my favorite person- Jesus Christ.
6. I spend time with family and friends.
7. I learn to be humble and grateful. It's a daily process that always needs to be nourished through prayer and studying.

Today, I was re-evaluating a list of personal goals I've made for this year. I am really hard on myself. Meaning, I beat myself up when I fail. I am extremely competitive with myself! However, this negative trait in my eyes is molding into something more positive.

Here are the positives I've come up with:

1. I never settle for being mediocre.
2. Whenever I attempt a new task, I am really passionate about the cause.
3. As I beat myself up when I fall short, I subsequently drive my heart and soul to a newer level of determination.

So, here's my goal to everyone else. Whether you believe in some God, a Higher Being, or spirituality,

take time to breath and meditate! Life is all about self-discovery. I'm working on mine one day at a time.

Tomorrow I promise to post pictures. Sundays, I don't feel is appropriate to indulge in my ultra-fun hobby. hahaha

Do I sound annoying?

I am wide awake at 4am on a Sunday morning...sigh. Not sure why. Wish I were sleeping :)

So, the other day I was leaving a voicemail for a friend. As I was speaking, I felt phrases flowing from my mouth, forming useless, incomplete nonsense. Nonsense, guys. Coming out of my mouth. Seriously, am I really that annoying? I hope not :) Cause it would suck to be my friend hahaha Let me refresh the memory of those who have painfully had to cringe their faces the 50 million times I've over used "cute, so fun, i love it!" At one point it has to get annoying.

Funny thing, all three of those statements are in the lastest scrapbook page I just made. What's the point of journaling on a layout if that is all I can come up with?? I'm thinking I need to request a scrapbook manufacturer have a "Vague Journaling Stamp" made. I promise, I can come up with a strong marketing pitch.

"Are you lazy? Of the 30% of knowledge the human brain recalls, has high school English dissipated your dancing dendrites to zaps of nothingness? Well, we've come up with the perfect product! A Vague Statement Stamp that will make scrapbooking much easier for those of you who are incapable of composing a complete statement into meaningful journaling. Enjoy!"

And now I think I can sleep... now that my brain has had it's match with me. goodnite dear bloggers.

Friday Errands

I have a couple little errands to run today. But I wanted to keep my promise that I'd update the rest of the week. One more day to go. Yea!

Today's To Do List:

1. stop by the post office to mail out a package to Karen.
   
2. do some cleaning and laundry.
   
3. clean my sister's room because she left it a little messy when she left. One of my cousins is in town and is going to stay in her room tonight.
   
4. Tonight I'm going to go scrapping here. They have free friday night crops.
   

Here's a picture of a scrapbook I sent my sister in the mail. This was the scrapbook I won at the Oasis crop. Sorry but I didn't have a chance to take pictures of the inside. I was running out of time to get to the post office before they close.

Here's a picture of me and my sister at the San Diego Temple. SOo Gorgeous!! Everytime I take a picture there it looks like I was just photoshoped in. lol I promise I wasn't.

Here's one more picture before I go. I still need to add the picture to this layout. So for now, here a little snippet lol. This was another layout I did at the crop.

Right now I feel like I'm consumed with pictures of my sister haha. I promised her I would have her mission scrapbook all done by the time she gets back. 18 months. While she's on her mission I made a little "checklist" of things I need from her while she's on her mission. The only way to get it all done is with a little organization I told her hahaha. For each month, I'm going to make a calendar with pictures or what she did each day. I printed her out a little spreadsheet with each day of the month where she can write a few words or put a picture for that day. Then at the end of the month she will mail it back to me and I'll scrap it. I got the inspiration from Heidi Swapp.

Inspiration

Here's a little random inspiration

Doodlebug is one of my favorite scrapbook companies because they have the cutest ads! I always look forward to seeing them in the magazines. I've been at weddings that have these candy spots as the wedding favors. I totally want to do a display like this. It's so colorful!

I remember seeing this on Print and Pattern blog and thought this is such a cute idea. I love the interactive concept and the contrast between the white background and the colors. I really want to do this in the future when I have kids in a play room. Yes you may say that is totally crazy. Kids don't color in the lines. oh well. When it's all finish you can always paint over it :)

A couple of weeks ago I went to Scrapbook Oasis for the CHA crop. We received breakfast, lunch, and dinner, Sprinkles Cupcakes (I got a red velvet), a chocolate fountain, 3 pre-made layouts with lots of extras, plus lots of raffles. I won a mini scrapbook by SEI, and new paper lines from Black Market Society and Pink Paislee. It was so much fun. I got a lot done. I did 7 pages and finished a mini book I'd been working on. The crop was 16 hours and I stayed the whole night until the end haha.

I'll try and post all of those layouts here. For now here is the first layout I finished at the crop. Actually semi-finished because I still need to add journaling. These photos are from Kim and Jared's wedding in June.

We missed Karen's phone call

So I'm totally bummed right now because we missed Karen's phone call! :( She left the MTC today and she emailed last night that she would be calling at 6am from the airport. She's in Utah so there's a time difference. My dad said he'd wake me up when she called. Well she didn't call so my dad went on a walk. Karen ends up calling at 7:30 am. SOoo SAd! Which would make it 8:30 am in Utah. I was really looking forward to talking to her on the phone. Now we won't be able to talk to her til Christmas. Sigh...


Anyway, I have a goal of updating my blog everyday this week. Haha Which is good I started the goal on a Wednesday, so that leaves me only 3 more days of updating lol. I want to do a summer recap with photos, some scrapbook layouts I've worked on, maybe pictures of my scrapbook working area :)





I love Martha Stewart. Ever since I was little I seriously would watch her shows. lol Saturday mornings- before she had a talk show. I learned so much from her. I remember the day I learned how to properly fold a bed sheet. You grab the corners and tuck them in :) Well, I went in our linen closet and refolded everything Martha's way and it made the closet much more organized!

Anyway, for Karen's farewell party I needed some decorating ideas. I went here for ideas. Aren't those paper laterns so beautiful! I love butterflies.!!


















I really wanted to create this chandelier. Rachel Denbow is so inspiring. I love going to her site for decorating ideas and how she resurfaces her vintage finds. She's very clever :)

And lastly, these pom pom paper laterns. SOo fun! One day
when I get married these would be so cute. I'm imagining these laterns hanging in the center of each table with chandelier jewels and hints of glitter on the tips:) I have so many images saved of cute decorating ideas. I'll have to post more of them.

Sunny Weekend

This weekend went by super fast. The warm weather this weekend was awesome. Here's a little recap of the past weekend since I haven't blogged for awhile.

On friday, me and charlie took my brother's pups for a walk. They are soo adorable. One of the puppies, Nikki, has a broken leg so we weren't sure how she was gonna hold up, but she was running around like crazy. She loved the walk and being outside. Then, later that night we went to a church dance.

On Saturday, I had to work all day, and I missed Charlie's last basketball game. But, his mom taped pratically the whole game :) so I watched the recaps. Later that night, Justin wanted to go on a double date with me and charlie and I had the bright idea to go pier fishing at Seal Beach. It was a nice night to be at the beach. But fishing... we didn't catch anything. It was pretty boring when you're just sitting..and waiting. I'm so impatient lol. So we gave up on the fishing after like 30 minutes and got some Cold Stone's and we ate along the beach.

On Sunday, I had an early presidency meeting at Megan's house. We hadn't had a meeting for awhile with all of us there and I've missed all of the ladies. It's so great to have the opportunity to meet together every Sunday. At church there was this amazing high school choir that sang . After church I hung out at charlie's and totally passed out. I was so sleepy. Then, after we had dinner, me, charlie, justin, and aubrey started cleaning together in the kitchen and it was actually fun. It's fun getting the boys to clean haha. They loved it :) Later that night we went back to my house where karen invited a bunch a people over and were having a lil party. I made some yummy brownie cupcakes and we all just chilled and hung out. and that's about it.

I haven't been scrapbooking lately and I miss it. i need to make time to scrapbook...

Spring Cleaning

My room is semi-clean! It's funny because I'm an organize freak, but it seems I can not keep my room clean. I'm determined I need a second bedroom. Whenever I start a scrapbook project I create a disaster in my room. I'm big on letting the creative juices flow with random things all over... and by chance I usually find something random that works perfectly with what I'm workin on. I do like organizing everthing back in its place when I'm finish, but I like to wait until i finish the project...and i usually never finish a project in one day. so.. i draw the conclusion that i need another room. i keep telling my sister when she goes on a mission her room will be mine. lol lol

Anyway, what led to my spring cleaning mission was all a result of a mid day nap. First, this weekend we had the General Conference thing for our church--which was incredibly amazing. i heart church soo much. We watched all our leaders speak on the BYU channel from sat. 9-11am and 1-3pm. the guys have a special meeting at the church from 5-7pm. then sun 9-11am and 1-3pm.

Now by mid day Sunday, I started to get really sleepy. it can get pretty exhausting. Charlie fell asleep and didn't even watch the afternoon Sunday session. I didn't realize until after listening to Brother Bednar, heard a cool quote, look over at Charlie to see if he thought it was cool too--- and he was sound asleep. snoring in all lol. he looked so peaceful i didn't want to wake him. ANyway, an hour later i fell asleep for like 45 minutes. And thus, I could not sleep that night! I always try not to take naps for this very reason. So I got up, put on the Holiday--my fav chick flick-- and started cleaning. I cleaned the living room, kitchen, bathroom, did my laundry, and cleaned my room. By the time I was done it was 5am in the morning!

Anyway, today we picked up karen from the airport. She had soo much fun on her trip to Utah.

Red Velvet Delight

Today was so yummy! Charlie and I went to Bake n Broil in Long Beach off of Atlantic for dinner. They have the most delicious dessert ever-- Red Velvet Cake. It melts in your mouth. The secret is the cheesecake frosting. If you are ever in the area you have to try.

Yesterday for church the guys had “Manrichment”. Their activity was racing boats in rain gutters with water. The ladies were invited on this one, but I really didn't have my adventurous little boy side in me that night. I just dropped by quickly to bring some dessert-- pink sprinkled chocolate cupcakes :) I was mighty impress with the effort the guys put in this activity. It's fun to watch them trying different ways to make their boats go faster- like attach rocket engines. Boys are carazy! They were trying to keep me and Karen there, but we wanted to go to Institute. Charlie would have loved this activity, but his family all took a trip to the Temple that night.

Karen and I decided to go to Institute because we hadn’t been for the past three weeks. For church, we had two Enrichment Nights back to back, then spring break. We’ve been learning from the Old Testament and last night we studied the book of Samuel. The class was amazing. Sometimes the Bible can be hard to follow. If I'm not really pondering or do not understand what I'm reading, I miss out on important spiritual symbolism. That's why I love Brother Given's Institute classes. He really pushes us to go deeper for meaning plus he always trys to make it relatable for our everyday lives. My favorite chapter was Samuel 3. Samuel had an amazing experience where the Lord spoke to him.

Also today, Charlie and I dropped Karen off at the airport. She's going to Utah for a long weekend. This weekend our church is having a semi annual General Conference where all our leaders give talks to help strengthen us and give us guidance . It's a big thing in our church and I'm excited. I always love the spiritual boost and the greater sense of purpose I gain. I hope my sis has fun!

Make it Happen.

I need to journal. more often. Everyday. This blog will hopefully help me reach my goal. My sister has really inspired me. Although she says she doesn't journal often-- if you see her journal, it is tangible proof! Fortunately, I love to write. However, for some reason I do not enjoy writing about myself. Kinda weird.

Anyway, before I go, here's a little something I wrote awhile ago for someone very special.

Love

Endures

Aspires

Dreams

Plans

And

Grows

Together

We

Are

Reaching

Towards

Something

Higher

You

And

I

-- july 26 07