New Year, Oprah and Project 365!

Happy New Year!!

So excited to start a fresh new year! I am totally into making my New Year's resolutions and trying my best to keep them....I've been especially motivated by Oprahs "Best Life" week and this post by my favorite blogger Cathy Z. If you have never read her blog before you are missing out...once you start you'll never stop. But I love everything she has to say about becoming healthy in 2009 and I'm with her! I start brand new at WW this week...and I'm doing pretty good so far.

I love this from Cathy's blog - she's an awesome graphic designer and made this to look like Oprah's January cover page - seriously how can you NOT love Cathy!!

I'm also working on stressing less, being more deliberate with my time and enjoying the simple moments of life. I'm also committing to completing this one scrapbook project that I'm totally excited about: Project 365. It's a "photo a day project" that includes all these cool, simple tools to highlight a photo everyday for the year, along with journaling. Pre-printed journaling cards, page protectors, stickers, transparancies, etc....so all you do is slip in your photos, write your journaling on the cards, slip those in the album...and you're done! I usually don't promote "other" products that we don't carry, but this concept is so cool ... I just wanted to share. You don't even need the kit...you can use your own supplies to create your own personalized Project 365.

This kit is designed by none other than Becky Higgins (my all time scrapbook hero) and it's received a huge response and unfortunately there were major issues the CK Media's (Creating Keepsake's Magazine) ordering system, it was a holiday and no one was there to man customer service, their website crashed because so many people were trying to order the kit right at 9:00 am on New Year's Day, the kits sold out in minutes, tons of upset customers, blah, blah, blah. Unfortunately the dark side of the industry has come out on her blog with people being so critical and unbeleivabley rude and cruel to Becky. She's taking the brunt for CK's customer service...and is handling everything with grace. I know all too well when things don't go right with your business, or your computer system....and you have angry, upset customers and a big icky knot in your stomach. It effects your family, your life...everything...so I totally feel for Becky!! It took me a while to order the kit...and I'm still wondering if it was actually ordered...but I received a shipping confirmation so I'm hoping...but if I don't get it I WON'T be upset and angry....I'll just use things I already have in my stash and come up with something cool too!

I wanted to share a few of my daily photos so far...totally excited becuase I'm actually doing this and caught up and everthing:

Day 1: December 28 (I'm starting this day so I have a full week at a time...) Loving the feeling in our house after Christmas....enjoying the relaxed atmosphere after the busy craziness of Christmas. It's the day after my birthday....and enjoying the Christmas decorations that will soon be ripped down.

Day 2: December 29 - Spent a fun (and crazy) afternoon with my neighbors and friends Holly, Julie, Marli and all of our kids at Pizzeria. It's about the only place we can go with all of our kids...feel really sorry for everyone else that was there at the same time :) It was Holly's birthday on Christmas day, mine was on December 27 (Holly is also my first counselor in the Primary Presidency and our primary secretary had her birthday on December 24...too funny!)....this was our way of celebrating! Julie and Marli also got me a bucket of popcorn and refillable mugs for Megaplex 13...an awesome gift!! Thanks guys....

Day 3: December 30 - After our outing to Pizzeria, I took the kids to Target (very brave...I NEVER do that) and bought curtian rods with Target gift certificates I got for Christmas...I've been dying for Kevin to put up the new curtians I got for Christmas - so he didn't have an excuse anymore!! I practically begged him to put them up that night...now our house is becoming more like a home...sigh.

Day 4: December 31 - Spent a fun night at a spur-of-the-moment party with long-time friends Heidi and Courtnie (we've known each other since middle school!) The party was at Heidi's house....her house is beautiful and so fun...the perfect place for a party. We played Apples to Apples (so excited....I had always wanted to play that game so we bought it for the party) and we also played our new Guitar Hero. Bradley, Heidi's son, was totally good! Courtnie was a blast to watch...and the big boys loved it too. We actually didn't leave until almost 1:00 am....with our kids in tow!!

Day 5: January 1 - Spent a low-key New Year's day at home...which are the very best! Kevin took the kids sledding so I could get some stuff done around the house (sweet guy!) Love this picture of Katelyn and Ashlyn!

I may not post my photos for everyday...but I just wanted to share these fun snippets of our life so far in 2009...I totally LOVE this project!

Amber :)

Check it out...I Yearbooked myself!!

I found this website http://www.yearbookyourself.com/ on one of my friend's blogs - totally funny...I couldn't resist trying it out myself:

Amber @ 1960

Amber @ 1962

Amber @ 1966

Amber @ 1972

Amber @ 1974 (the year I was born :))

Amber @ 1978 (ewww....what a bad year)

Amber @ 1990 (Totally my year!)

Amber @ 1994

Go ahead...I know you want to try it!!

Look where I'll be all day Tuesday, September 23...I was asked to speak at the Just for Her Women's Fair at Weber state University! I'm excited and very nervous..not neccessarily to speak becuase I love presenting about MemoryWorks and scrapbooking...but just nervous becuase I still need to put my presentation together - Yikes!

Here's the schedule if anyone wants to go - in between my sessions I want to hit Don Aslett and Angel Shannon....I've convinced my mom to come with me so that will be fun!

Just For Her Women's Fair

Also check out these photos from Paullette's blog - Daina and Sherm took these with their web cam when Bryan and Preston were visiting them in Seattle...we couldn't even tell who they were at first!!

So funny - huh. We're all getting web cams so we can "talk" to Paul and Paullette while they're on their mission in Atlanta....and you can bet this is the first thing we're going to try out - so I'll be sure to post our own photos!

Talk to you soon!

Hello....I'm Back....!

Okay - too funny! I was just reading through some of my favorite blogs today and came accross one from one of my favorite scrapbookers that hadn't been updated since August 8, and I thought to myself..."She sooo needs to post to her blog"...then here I am on my own blog that I haven't posted to since August 11....hmmmm.

So I am still getting used to this blogging thing...sorry for not posting as there has been tons of fun things going on thats been keeping me pretty busy!

Here's a list of my "Top 10" reasons or things that have kept me from blogging the past 3 weeks:

Top 10 Reasons for not Blogging

10. Back to School - Need I say more! Katelyn started first grade and Brock started Wee Weber pre-school on August 25. Ashlyn started Kindergarten on September 2. Had to finish there school shopping, go to back-to-school night, and hit the Old Navy $7.00 denim sale bright and early on the Saturday before school started!

9. Yard, Dirt, Mud!! We are knee deep in getting our sprinklers finished so we can plant our grass before fall. Kevin has been working every morning, every night and every Saturday for the past month...we miss him and will be so glad when it's finished. We'll also be glad when we don't have mud and dirt everywhere!

8. Paul and Paulette's Mission: Paul and Paulette (Kevin's mom and dad) left on their mission on September 1 - so before they left we had a few parties and gatherings with the family. We will MISS them, but know they are where they need to be and they are setting such a good example for our family!

7. Summer Fun: It's been such an interesting summer, where we moved into our new house in the spring, had our retreat, and have been working on our yard it feels like we really haven't had much of a summer - so in the last month we've been to a family reunion, we've been to the swimming pool 2-3 times, had BBQs, been to family parties...all the things we should have been doing all summer long!

6. Dreaming of Decorating: I am patiently waiting until I can decorate our house...our budget has gone to expenses from moving into our home and landscaping our yard...I've had to wait until I could REALLY decorate...so in the meantime I've been shopping and looking...have found my two new favorite stores: Real Deals and Rod Works.....LOVE THEM!! I could do some serious damage...and can't wait to actually bring some fun new things home instead of just dreaming of them!!

5. McDonalds and 1 am trips to Wal-Mart: We love the new ward and neighborhood (with a few exceptions)- it's the reason why we moved! We have especially loved getting know the couples our age...such a difference from our last ward. Where this is a new subdivision everyone has this sense of making freindships and welcoming everyone...so it's been great. I've especially had fun with two moms with kids our childrens age - Julie and Marli - seriously so fun, especially the spur of the moment trips to McDonalds and 1:00 am trips to Wal-Mart.

4. Scrapbooking!: I am spending more time organizing and re-organzing my scrapbook room...it's almost finished! Now that school has started again my goal is to spend more time actually scrapbooking then just thinking about it!

3. Tumbling, Piano, carpool and Homework: Now that school has started and our kids are getting older, we're finding things get a little more crazy with all of the activities and homework. Luckily Katelyn hasn't had any homework yet, but Ashlyn has and it's a lesson in patience for me to sit through homework sessions with her! Katelyn's in piano and all three kids are now in tumbling...so we've joined the carpool and "run around all day dropping kids off" club!

2. Housework, cooking and cleaning: I'm learning that even in a new house you still have to clean, cook and do laundry. The house cleaning and laundry fairy hasn't showed up to my house.....yet!

1. Birthdays Galore: In a spand of one month we have so many birthdays in our family: Here's the birthdays for August and September: My Mom, Kevin, Logan, Brock, Katelyn, Libbee and Luke!

So there you go....my reasons for not posting!! Actually...things seem to finally be slowing down...HA! Until next time...:)

My Very Own Blog

Okay....I can't beleive I'm starting my very own blog! For some reason I've held off over the past few years, which is surprising as I am the first to jump head first into something new. But it just seemed as it was just one more thing I had to add to my "to do" list. Maybe I felt it needed to be an extension of MemoryWorks....which is just too much pressure and more "work". But after seeing my freinds jump on the bandwagon...I couldn't resist. In fact, it's a little liberating...I don't have to do it for MemoryWorks at all....this is something I can do for myself as a way to express myself and reconnect with all that's good in my life....my friends, family, and memory keeping. And that makes me very happy!!

Of course you'll see a little of everything on this blog, from my family, scrapbooking, and MemoryWorks...becuase...well it's my life. But there'll be no deadlines, no pressure...just whatever I want, whenever I want...my way!