The Christmas Rush is On!

Only 10 more days until Christmas? Say it isn't so! This holiday always manages to sneak up on me somehow. This week is filled with a 2nd grade recital, a church recital, a haircut and color {badly needed by me!} and an appointment with a physical therapist for my {yet again!} pulled calf muscle.

I managed to overdo it a few weeks back when I was running up some trail hills in preparation for my half marathon and pulled a calf muscle. I was forced to quit running for a week and then tested my calf out on a treadmill and felt fine. Two days later I decided to do my run outside and at 4 1/2 miles I had to stop. Yup, I think I exacerbated my original injury. Great.

So I'm just a bit frustrated that I can't train for yet another week but decided to get some advice from a physical therapist so that I don't keep repeating the same mistake because my time is running out {no pun intended.}

Here are the last 3 days of my December Daily.

 

 

I crack up when I look at the photo of my dad holding up his "ugly" cookie. I had a last piece of dough that was too small to cut out one last cookie so I decided it was going to be his "lump of coal" cookie. I frosted it and added some sprinkles and a few chocolate chips and it ended up looking like a holiday skeleton! When he put it up next to his face for some reason I thought I saw a resemblance. LOL.

Darren was showing off his hand-frosted cookie. He decided to give his snowman a yellow shirt. So after spending 4 hours baking and frosting 137 cookies I succumbed to eating 3 cookies. One was broken and the other 2...well, I have no excuse. Ha! Ha!

December Daily pages 9 - 11 and a letter back from Santa!

Here are the past 3 days of my December Daily pages.

 

 

 

 

The Parents Club at Darren's school held their 1st annual Winterfest yesterday. All proceeds benefited the school directly so supporting the event was a no-brainer. The school was jam-packed! Kids were allowed to shop for their parents and siblings in a kids-only area of the cafeteria with high school student volunteers helping them with their shopping list. They were even provided with free gift wrapping with helpers to boot!  There were craft projects galore, a Scholastic Book Store and even Santa was in the house for photos! The line was too long by the time we got there but we enjoyed ourselves nonetheless. Darren really enjoyed the opportunity to gift shop on his own {so to speak} and he can't wait for us to see what he chose.

Are you ready for the big news of the day?

This afternoon Darren received a letter from the one and only:

SANTA!!!

He was so excited to open it and read what Santa had to say. I know what I'm journaling about today but you won't be able to see it until tomorrow!

It's Back to School Time!

Darren finally broke his fever last night but was seen by his pediatrician anyhow. All is good except for a lingering cough so it's back to school tomorrow for him after missing an entire WEEK!

I'll finally be able to get back into my normal routine as well. I'm going to try to run on the treadmill tomorrow to test out my calf. Wish me luck!

Here are the past 3 days of my December Daily. I am really enjoying this process and am really trying to focus on telling my story through my journaling rather than the photo.

 

 

I still need to add my journaling  for day 8 but I'm going to add in a small page for it.

Oh, and I picked this up today with Ginger:

 

and yeah, she got one too!

Squeeeeee!!!

Sick Day #5 and Counting!

My poor little guy is STILL sick! If he continues with his fever tomorrow he'll be seeing his pediatrician. He is being a trooper though. The kid has been overdosing on Sponge Bob SquarePants and iCarly episodes as well as taking advantage of the freedom to drink as much Sprite as he wants. I love how he looks on the bright side of things!

So here is the reason for my getting behind in my December Daily journal:

 

Different variations of this snow globe are everywhere on craft blogs thanks to Holly Hanks' idea that has spread like the flu! It was totally fun to make and it's happily displayed at the entrance to our house.

Here are my December Daily pages 4 & 5. I'm currently working on yesterday and today's pages.

 

I am so anxious to get back to running because my half marathon is exactly 2 months from today. Ack! I pulled a calf muscle running up 2 1/2 miles of hills {see Dec. Daily page 5}so I guess Darren's illness couldn't be better timed. We're both out for the count for now...here's hoping for a healthier day tomorrow!

One Happy Gal!

Despite the fact that Darren is STILL sick with a fever, Bruce is working tonight and I'm cooking dinner as we speak, I couldn't have had a better birthday! Hubby scored MAJOR bonus points with this:

I am the soon-to-be proud owner of a new iPhone 3G!!! Woo-hoo!!! The gift card was inside of the card and when I saw it I was so confused. I thought hubby had bought me a gift card to the Apple store so that I could buy accessories or something.

I was like, "Huh?"

Poor Bruce had to explain that the card was for the iPhone 3G. He said he was tired of hearing me complain about how slow my 1st generation iPhone is and how great it would be to have video and photo zoom features as well as faster internet loading. Guess all that complaining paid off!

On a totally unrelated note, I am now 3 days {argh!} behind on my December daily journal because I've been tending to a sick child and working on a little holiday project that I'll post a picture of tomorrow.

I can't wait to pick up my new phone!!!

December Daily - Day 3

Here's my December Daily page 3.

Unfortunately, Darren is now on Day 2 of being sick. Thanks goodness for Motrin!

Last Friday Hambly had a 30% off  sale plus free shipping. It just arrived so merry {early} Christmas to me!

Can you tell I like their circle patterns? LOL

Happy Friday everyone!

December Daily - Day 2

Here's my December Daily page from yesterday.

 Yup. I got out my Christmas cards already!

I have a sick boy home from school today. I hope it doesn't turn into anything horrible. He was bound to catch something sooner or later since he hasn't been sick in a while.

On a side note, if you don't follow Tim Holtz's blog, don't miss out on his 12 Tags of Christmas. The guy is a total genius. If I hadn't already sent out my holiday cards and had an extra few hours in the day I would've loved to have made these plaid backgrounds made from alcohol inks as the background to my card. Look what he created:

 

Oh well, there's always next year! Did I mention that he is giving away oodles of giveaways on his blog everyday if you simply post a comment? What are you waiting for? Go do it! :)

December Daily - Day 1

Here's my official first page of my December Daily. So far, so good! Let's hope I can keep this up for the next 24 days!

Here's a copy of the letter that Darren mailed. I'm so glad I thought to make a copy of it for my album!

I hope money grows on trees up at the North Pole because that's quite a list!

I Ran Wild for a Child

So yesterday morning I got up at 4:45am to do a 10K run with some fellow friends and our boot camp trainer in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park. I ran my first 5K run in this same race last year and I think it's now going to be a tradition because every year it just gets more fun. It's the Run Wild for a Child 5K/10K run that's held every year the Sunday following Thanksgiving. The run supports the SF Firefighter's Toy Drive.

8 of us got together and ran 6.2 miles and experienced some pretty amazing moments together. Three of them had never run more than 4 miles or so and they all finished the race under their goal time! The run also served as a huge life milestone for someone else in the group. To go through the run together, supporting each other, experiencing the level of comraderie that we do and sharing laughs and tears all in the span of one race was unforgettable. Love you guys!

 Here we are with our race t-shirts!

Just moments before the run!

Me at the finish line!

My December Daily

Here are most of my foundation pages for my December Daily journal album.

 

 

I decided not to number my pages so that I could have the flexibility of moving my pages around depending on what pictures and journaling I want to add on a particular day.

On a totally unrelated topic, did any of you dark chocolate lovers see the commercial for this? :

Great! Just in time for the holidays! Good thing I'm training for this half marathon because I'm going to need to burn off a lot of holiday calories in the next few months!

Up on the Catwalk!

I can't believe my Snorkel Boy mini-album made it on SIStv's catwalk today! I am on Cloud 9! Getting selected by Amy Tangerine is just icing on the cake. There is so much serious talent and creativity on SIStv that I was seriously shocked to have been picked.

While we're on the topic of scrapbooking, who else is doing Ali Edwards' December Daily project? I started working on my foundation pages on Sunday and last night and I'm real excited about committing to an album that focuses on the journaling versus the photos. Once I'm done with a majority of my 25 pages (!) I'll post a few pictures.

Happy Tuesday!

Snorkel Boy and Runner Girl

When I bought this Cosmo Cricket Snorkel paper when it was first released I knew exactly what I was going to do with it: make a mini-album of Darren's snorkeling trips from our Kauai vacation. Here it is:













Brrrr! It is COLD today but I am going to go out for a run as my half marathon training officially begins today! I am happy {and comforted!} in knowing that last week I talked 2 friends into doing the run with me so that I won't be alone. It will also help keep me motivated to stick it out on my upcoming longer training runs.

My niece's TV show, "Ninth Period" unfortunately didn't air last weekend. We found out Saturday afternoon that the show will not start airing until January. But the good news is that then even more national channels will sign on to air the show. So for now, we all anxiously await the premiere next year.

Happy Monday!

Totally Exciting News: Ninth Period

Last night I found out that my niece's pilot TV show "9th Period" will be premiering tomorrow at 9:00am on local station KFTY Channel 50. She filmed a few episodes last summer but hadn't heard of the show being picked up until now. I am SO excited for her! Here she is with her two co-stars:



The show is about 3 middle school-aged kids solving mysteries. I think a show like this will be a hit as it's a throwback to the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew Mysteries TV series that were popular back in my childhood days.

Check out the producer's website: Chan Add Films to see a rough trailer. Let me know what you think if you are able to watch the pilot episode tomorrow!

Been Procrastinating...

I've had so many things to post on my blog that I felt overwhelmed and kept telling myself, "I'll do it tomorrow." Well, tomorrow turned into next week and here we are in November! It's been a whirlwind few weeks since coming back from vacation and helping host my sister's engagement party.

Here's a photo of me and Ginger with the ever-inspiring Donna Downey. Love her! She is a runner like me and she recently completed her first half marathon. I was so inspired by her accomplishment that the next day I officially registered for the Kaiser Permanente Half Marathon in SF next February. I'd been pondering signing up but was hesitant on making the training commitment so a huge thank-you to Donna for giving me that kick that I needed!



We took a mixed media class with her at Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley a few weeks back and decided it was the perfect album for my sister's engagement party photos.









Halloween was fun this year. Darren's school had a Halloween parade and party so I spent about 5 hours in his classroom that day. (!) Here's Darren with a few of his classmates (or shall I say partners in crime?)





I invited my parents and Ginger and her family over for a BBQ and then we took turns handing out the candy and taking the kids trick-or-treating. The boys are at such a fun age for this holiday and I'm glad they enjoyed celebrating it together.



Are they hilarious or what?!?



I have another mini-album to post so look out for a blog update again soon! (I promise!)