In progress updates…

Well, besides the enormous amount of eating I seem to have done, I am making progress on a few other goals. And some are coming towards me whether I am ready for them or not.

Going to Rome–slowly sneaking up on me. I met with Kristen and Matt to get all the good hints this weekend. Hopefully Jeremy is spending his time in Canada plotting fabulous things for us to do. I still need to spend some time with some down and dirty planning, but I’m not quite there yet.

Learning Italian–not so much. Rosetta stone didn’t work out, and I have yet to listen to the cds I have. Some other ones are at the library but right now I’m avoiding dealing with fines I have at the library (and as a side note, from now on I’m really really not going to let kids/other teachers take my library books. I don’t keep up with it until its too late, and by then I owe them my firstborn child. Ugh)

See a play–well, I just saw Seussical the Musical, but because that was not a choice (since it was a field trip for school) I’m not counting it. (Do you hear that sound? That’s Jeremy groaning)

Throw my sister’s bridal shower–working on this one. I have designed the invites, but need to actually get them in the mail. I think the theme of “Rednecks Gone Wild” will go over well. (Just kidding Kristen)

#67–Eat at new restaurants: Cajun Bangkok

Well, as you can tell, I’m really good at eating and doing things that aren’t that hard. Most of this blog is new restaurants and card/stamping updates.

Jeremy and I actually went to Cajun Bangkok two weeks ago. He had read about it opening on one of his blogs, and was anxious to go. It is supposed to be a mix of (you guessed it!) New Orleans and Thai food. When we arrived there was only one or two other people in the place, but it began to fill up as we were there.

At first I was put off because almost all of their dishes involve some type of seafood, which I don’t eat. But they were perfectly willing to substitute chicken in their pad thai dish. The pad thai was delicious! Jeremy got some fancy gumbo which he really enjoyed. I would definitely go back there.

I ended up craving the pad thai for the rest of the weekend. This resulted in us making our own version at home, which was good (would have been better if I hadn’t undercooked the noodles!) but wasn’t anywhere near the one at Cajun Bangkok.

Completed! #30 Make and send 5 scrapbooked cards

Another goal completed! I have actually made 15 cards at this point, but I only just recently mailed the last few that allowed me to count this goal as finished. More pictures of the cards will be up some point soon for those who care. I think I will actually end up sending more cards because I’m making them then I sent before when I just bought cards. Initially I only bought a small pack of six white cards and a box with small colored ones, but today at Michaels I bought a pack of 50 that were on sale. So this is one goal that will hopefully be continued long after the 101 project is over!

Completed! #87–organize files

I am so excited that I have finally finished one of my goals. All of my old financial files (including just about every bank and credit card statement I’d ever gotten, along with cell phone bills for a company I haven’t used in three years) were in the file drawer of my built in desk. While this was fabulous for a while, now that I’m anticipating leaving this house within the next six months, I needed an easy way to transfer the files. So today, I finally completed the long awaited task of shredding all my old stuff (two entire trashbags full of shredded papers!) and organizing all of my files into a portable file box. Yay! This is definitely one of those things I never would have done without it being on my list.

The Nile–#67, go to new restaurants

Today we went to eat lunch at a new restaurant called The Nile. It serves Ethiopian food, and you eat with your hands and bread instead of utensils. It was fantastic, I would definitely go back. Erin, Jeremy, and I all got a combination plate, where you can try five different dishes. We got chicken, two beef dishes, lamb, and a potato stew and enjoyed them all. The food is spicy but more flavorful spicy than hot spicy. They give you pieces of spongy tortilla-ish bread called injera that you use to scoop up the food and eat it, which is fun.

Digital Scrapbooking and Photoshop fun!

My whole weekend was spent discovering photoshop. It is definitely my new favorite thing. Finally, I can make my own headers, I can try digital scrapbooking, and I can make my own designs rather than searching the web for them.

In the beginning of the weekend I spent time learning about digital scrapbooking. The Shabby Princess site is all you really need to get started. She has a tutorial that not only tells you how to do your first layout in photoshop, but also has a video where she steps you through each part and you can see what she is doing on the screen. It was amazingly helpful for someone who is brand new to photoshop. On top of that, she has the best digital kits by far.

There were several other places that I found free downloadable digital scrapbooking kits. Many sites offer one or two things for free each week, so it was nice to find several in one spot.

Simply Clean Digi Scraps

Painted Pixels

Scrappy Pony

After the tutorials helped me to figure out the basics, I made some beginning layouts and some headers. I really got into the headers, so expect the header to be changing pretty often.

Another new love of mine is the brushes in photoshop. Nothing makes you feel artistic like essentially stamping someone else’s creation all over your layout. My absolute favorite brushes are the Seishido brushes. They are amazing. They remind me of many of the holiday stamps you would see for scrapbooking. Other places I found brushes that I liked are:

PS Brushes

Seishido’s Holiday Brushes

Here are the layouts I did this weekend. Love those polka-dots!

95. watch 15 new movies from the AFI list

This weekend I watched two new movies from the AFI Top 100 list. I like this goal because it forces me to watch movies I probably otherwise wouldn’t watch, but that I end up enjoying when I do watch them.

The first movie I watched was The Graduate. It’s always interesting to watch the movie that you know you have seen references to, because then other things start to make sense. (Of course, Jeremy is always there to explain what episode of the Simpsons referenced each movie, which is always helpful. And if you don’t have your own personal Jeremy at home, you can check out the reference and the linked scene here.)

We also watched Fargo. As I was trying to ease my way into movies that weren’t romantic comedies (figuring that The Graduate fits loosely in that category) I think I picked Fargo because my head was confusing it with the tv series Northern Exposure. Of course, the two are totally different things. Once I got over that, I really enjoyed the movie. But, I must be the most culturally illiterate person on the planet–I had NO idea that the wood chipper scene was in this movie, so I had a very girly-screechy reaction when I finally saw it. I could have gone my whole life though happily without seeing that, but overall I still liked the movie.

Joe’s Inn–#67, go to ten new restaurants

Tonight Jeremy and I went to Joe’s Inn. One new restaurant down, nine to go! It was a really nice place, and we would definitely go back there again. It’s so close to his place that we are able to walk there, which is nice. They have a variety of spaghetti, and some other Italian dishes, but not a full selection like some other Italian restaurants. We both had spaghetti and it was very good. They give you enough food to feed a small army, so we both took doggie boxes home and plan to hole up in the house tomorrow when it snows and eat the rest of our spaghetti.

We were also pleased because there was no wait for a table even though we went at prime time on a Friday night. So many of the Fan restaurants are so crowded that finding one that seems normal is exciting. All in all, this restaurant will definitely join the repetoire of the ones we rotate to.

The Blog Addiction

Most people know that I read pretty many blogs every day. I spend more time on the computer than I do watching TV on the average weeknight (although often I do both, I’m fabulously coordinated like that!). On the blogroll to the right, I listed only a few of the more general blogs I read that I thought other people might be interested in…but, I really read many more (much dorkier) blogs in addition to those each day.

To keep up with all of my dorkiness, I have enlisted the help of bloglines. When I started using bloglines my enthusiasm knew no end, but now that its been a part of my life for some time now, its fallen to the “taken for granted” side of things. But that doesn’t mean the love isn’t still there! Here’s what I like about it:

• it keeps all of my blogs in one spot (no more searching through bookmarks)
• it keeps track of the new posts that I haven’t read, so I don’t spend time looking at sites that haven’t been updated
• I can share my list or keep it private (see link below)
• I can access my list anywhere, so I don’t have to be on my own computer to get a hit of cute animals, bad fashion, or life hacking tips
• I can read the info through the blog reader and avoid any advertisements (though this is sometimes a disadvantage and you have to click on the blog title to get to a video or something)

I do need to weed out some of the links to blogs that have begun to annoy me, or are just taking up space. It’s been on my to do list for some time, but is one of those things that is just not important enough to beat out other things that need to be done to actually get completed at any point. Mainly I read stuff about finances, productivity, and random writers that amuse me. So, here is my blog list, complete with some random ones I don’t really read anymore.

Risawahoo’s Bloglines

Oh, and PS…no late opening, although it did snow ALL DAY until almost dismissal time. It’s nearly impossible to keep kids working when it is snowing…although I can’t really blame them, its hard for me too.  Something about snow kicks in my “must read a book in bed with hot chocolate” instinct.

A plea for inside-out PJs

All little kids know that wearing your pajamas inside out increases your chances of a snow day…let’s hope that the combined charms of exposed seams and tags will bring the winter weather our way. I’m really wanting at least a late opening or SOMETHING as we haven’t had any snow days this year, and very few last year. That pretty much guarantees that it will be very cold and rainy and miserable–and that when I wake up and anxiously listen to the radio there will be plenty of counties that are delayed or out, but they will skip over mine. Let’s hope that I’m wrong, and that we have some really icy roads to keep us at home.

My ideal snow day involves lots of napping, daytime television involving: decorating, babies, families with too many babies, and real estate (or all of the above.) Plus, I could get things done around the house (watch those Joe’s Goals lines shoot up!) and play with my new card making supplies. I need to stop thinking about this, because when I end up going in on time I’ll be so grumpy that all my snow day hopes and dreams were crushed.