elizabethmccoy

I can't believe it but in 25 days I will be in San Jose at Adobe HQ at a laptop crop!!!! WOOT WOOT!! I am super excited to meet some of my fellow DSP team members and also a bunch of awesome members at DSP!!! I'm also very excited to be scrapping at Adobe...what a surreal moment that will be!!!! Gives me chills LOL!!!!

We had a branch fellowship yesterday to welcome home our advanced class grads and we were able to get a couple family pictures :-) Loved this one. I had hoped we'd get some pictures because I actually had my hair down. I don't like my hair cut right now, and I'm much to busy to blow dry, etc in the morning so I usually just put it up in a pony tail. Today I purposefully kept it down. It was pretty darn frizzy and it was beyond humid yesterday so it is a bit wild!! But i'm thankful to have a photo of our family :)

Sure hope your weekend was wonderful!!!!

Well I'm sorry I missed this in the theater but we "demanded" it on Friday night. And it was WONDERFUL!! I literally LOL'd 5 times!!!!

Jack black is hilarious as is mos def. the whole movie was clever and witty. I thoroughly enjoyed it and hope you get a chance to watch it too!!!

Here is a sweded video (not from the movie) that is funny!!!

Okay this site is hysterical!!!!!!! I'm laughing my a** off on this one!!!!

manbabies.com

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

GET MORE AT ManBabies.com!

Hey I have a new favorite site: hulu
it is a great place to watch some of your favorite old and recent tv shows. FOR FREE!!!!! oh yeah and they have full length movies too!!

check them out and watch a tv show or two!! I'll leave you with a clip from a fav tv show of mine

We went to our twin nephew's birthday party today which was great they had the party at a beautiful park very quite which was great to hold a birthday party. There was a pretty waterfall with rocks and running water below it so we took ds down there and took some pictures. I only got about 20 down there and these are my favorites.

Here we are day 5 of our vacation and just now getting to paint with color!!! It has been a tiring staycation (LOL hubby came up with that one) but we're liking the color more and more and are happy to be done!!! Well except we still need a second coat...Hopefully we'll accomplish that today.

back wall with bay window

dh painting the half wall

another shot of the back wall

doorway into the playroom (dining room & living room) Hey don't you just love our retro oven LOL!!!

The 2008 Scrappy Awards are being held this month at DSP. I have entered 2 layouts so far in the following categories:

Best use of a Single DSP Kit
"Pure Love"


Best Use of a DSP Quick Click
"Sunshine Smile"


Click on the layouts to see credits.

Anyone want to share the blog tools they use???



===COMMENT MANAGERS===

Here is one I LOVE called Disqus.
It is a comment manager it turns your comments on a post into a
threaded gropuing. It also allows you to manage all your comments (on
multiple blogs, too) from one control panel. I love that it also
integrates with Plaxo (www.plaxo.com)
where I feed my blogs into. If someone leaves a comment on my blog post
within plaxo it will show up on my blog for others outside of plaxo to
read.



http://disqus.com/



===PUBLISHERS===

I also use Scribefire (for Firefox) and love love love publishing to all my blogs through scribefire.



http://www.scribefire.com/


When posting photos at home I will sometimes use Picasa (free photo manager) you can easily edit your photos then publish them to your blogger blogs.

http://picasa.google.com/blogger/





Anyone else have any tools they want to share.

Found this great map on my friend Jamie's blog and had to do my own.

Here is a great map of all the places (states) I've been (either driving through or actually visiting). Click on the link below to make your own!!!!

Well we're on day 3 of vacation day 2 of working on the kitchen. A friend of ours, Beth, a professional painter gave us some pointers on where to get started today. The walls from taking the wallpaper down were beyond SCARY!!! We weren't sure what the heck we were thinking LOL!! She instructed us to prime over everything and that will show us better where we need to spackle and sand etc.


Wall above the open railing.

Back wall with bay window & back door

Wall with doorway to playroom.

Here are some photos of the in between part.

Back wall with most of the wallpaper removed.

Overhead wall above the open railing to the den.

Still a work in progress today we have Jack so we're playing and running errands. We will probably get alittle more done while he takes his nap and again when he goes to bed tonight. Tomorrow will be a bigger progress day. Things are definitely gettin difficult as the 2 layer of wallpaper (original to the house) is stuck on there pretty darn good. Looks like we might have to skim coat all the surfaces. YIKES!!! We are going to have to beg our friend to come over and help us with that part :)

Here are the before pictures of the lovely (NOT) wallpaper.

This is the wall above the open railing to the den.

This is our kitchen desk...uh yeah it is messy but look how much more messy the busy wallpaper makes it look :)

The back wall with the back door and bay window with the wallpaper on.

Photo of me fall 2001 in the N. Georgia Mountains

We had our first breakfast meeting this morning for our Christians Should be Prosperous: Tips for Saving $ and Practical Living.

WOW! What an amazing informative and over all incredible session. The topics were Appliance Maintenance and Lowering Utility Costs.

David, a heating & air professional for 30 years, shared on appliance maintenance and blew me away! He opened with reminding us to be thankful. Not so long ago the things we consider necessities, like a washing machine, central heating & air, etc were luxuries and not so long before that were non existent. Wow! Think about that for a minute....no a/c...hand washing clothes....line drying??? There certainly is MUCH to be thankful for just looking around at those things we may take for granted.

I won't share everything but I will share with you a few points I took away from it and also a tip or two. The appliances we have in our home are considered "big ticket" or expensive items. We usually save up $$ for awhile and cut back to afford these items, we bring them home plug them in and then use them and use them hard until they start making a weird noise or not performing optimally. Then we might call a repair man get an estimate and if it is too high we start saving for a new one or a better one with more bells and whistles.

Or maybe that's just me.

There is a lot we can do to extend the life of our major appliances. A major point was anything with a motor need to be kept CLEAN and this is not emptying the refrigerator of stinky food or cleaning the lint off the dryer filter. It is getting under/behind/around the refrigerator cleaning the coils getting that motor stopping dust and debris away from the motor. Getting into the dryer every 1-3 years and clean out the lint that made it past the filter.

Your dryer's lint filter gets a coating on it from the fabric softner that you might not see with your eye but if you take the filter and pour a bit of water on it and it doesn't run right through you've got build up and it is causing your dryer to work harder and your lint filter won't be catching all the lint. **TIP** Once a month scrub with soap and water your dryer's lint filter. After you've cleaned it run water over it again it should go right through.
Well that is something I never knew!!! Scary so I will be scrubbing my dryer lint filter today!!!

Another tip he shared was with our furnace filters. I think we all kind of know the rule of thumb to change your filters with the time change or every 6 months, etc. A light bulb lit when David shared that each household is different. He said a single person without much activity may not need to change their filters for 6 months. But a busy household with 4 people some pets and alot more activity may need to change their air filters every 2 weeks, okay I think every 2 weeks might have been sarcasm but you get what he's saying right??? Each household has it's own rythm it's own furnace etc. **TIP** When you go to change your filter next if you can't see any light through it know that you need to change it more quickly next time. Shorten your changing time. I look forward to pinpointing our household's filter schedule (LOL is that dorky or what) so that we can maximize our furnace's efficiency and save $$ just by letting it run properly.

In conclusion, what I loved most learning to be a better steward of my appliances will save me $$ and also extend the life of the items I have invested my $$ into which also saves me money in the long term. Of course I was (probably still am) one of those people who thinks a
washing machine, dryer, air conditioner, dishwasher, etc etc, are all
rights of living in this day and time. I will be working hard to
remind myself of the luxuries I have and how I can best utilize them to
bless my family in their intended purpose but also blessing my family
with stewardship which will result in financial abundance.


I'll post soon about part 2 on lowering utility costs.

Hey this is my latest layout another plopper (Pre-made page
for you to “plop” your photos onto. Usually in jpg format that you would place
your photos on top of,
however some are PNG
with holes for your photos so you can place them
underneath.) HI'm not 100% sold on this layout. I added an alpha with the 21 months in the upper right hand corner everything else (except journaling) is fixed on the page...if you have any suggestions on how to tweak this layout I'm all ears.

Thanks

Well we had soo much fun last Saturday at our Scrapbook Crop here in Lawrenceville, GA. Not too many of us were able to make it but we all got lots of goodies and prizes so that was fun. And Tracy was the only one to complete a layout!!! Way to go Tracy. Here is the scrapbook page I finally completed using a plopper by Elizabeth Weaver that she generously gave to all of us at the crop. DSP also provided CD prizes, store coupons, and bracelets! We shared our scrapbooks, tips and tricks on our software, different software we use and our beyond the layout products that we've purchased here and there. It was fun to meet fellow digiscrappers in person. I learned a bunch and can't wait for our next crop in a couple months.

Yippie dh and I both are taking next week off of work for a week long vacation. Where are we going you ask???

NO WHERE!!!

But we're excited because we're taking this time to paint the kitchen!!!! We haven't decided if we will be removing the hideous kitchen wall paper or just painting over it.

DS will still be going to grandma's to be watched, while mommy and daddy work our butts off!!! I am super excited because I really want to go with a fresh modern color and hopefully dh will get on board with my selection.

We're not painting the cabinetry or the trim as it looks fine and was painted a couple years ago. the wall color change will be pretty dramatic in itself because the wall paper is so busy.

I'll post some before during and after pictures next week. I wanted to share this now because I'm soo excited. Hopefully we stick to our schedule and are able to complete the whole project by that Friday when dh's parents come into town. It would be cool to show them the improved kitchen.

I wanted to paint the kitchen b/c 1. I hate the wall paper but more for reason 2. is that the busyness of the wall behind our kitchen desk adds to the messiness. I also have somethings I want to hang on the wall and didn't want to put them on the wallpaper then take them down to paint and then put them back up again.

So hopefully by the end of next week our kitchen desk project will be finished too!!!

A friend of mine recently blogged about her priorities in life and how she doesn't consider her self her number 1 priority but she is #4 on her list. I definitely see her point, and it reminded me of my priorities in my life and how my priorities don't line up with hers.

As a believing woman & mother my first priority IS myself. Does that sound selfish to you??? Well perhaps but here is why. I believe that my first priority is my relationship with GOD. I need to keep that relationship strong and vital so I can live my best life for Him, my heavenly father. This strong relationship is what makes me available, spiritually, phsyically and emotionally for other people in my life. Having an clear understanding of God's desires for my life help me to be LESS SELFISH---MORE GIVING---MORE LOVING towards others.

My second priority is the relationship I have with my husband. We strive to be like minded and in one accord as a married couple. We both work hard to keep our marriage relationship in harmony with what God's Word says it should be. We endeavor to communicate on all things like our hopes & dreams, to the status of the laundry. Again, having a strong marriage relationship based on biblical principles helps us both to be available to other relationships.

My third priority is the relationship I have with my child (and children in the future). Every day I endeavor to raise my child in the nurture and admonition of of the Lord. I instill and encourage him to make decisions based on the Word of God as that is my foundation, the foundation of my marriage, and the foundation of our family. Right now my son is only 22 mos so his biblical based decisions basically come down to choosing to OBEY his parents in the Lord (Eph 6:1). I discipline my son (appropriately for his age) according to the Word. I am showing him by my example how to set the priorities in his live and how to CHOOSE to make his relationship with GOD his first priority.

Lastly my priority is to give and support God's Household of Believers. Having my #1-3 priorities in order makes me my best for the Household. I am able to give of my self more and I am able to love God's people greater!!! And what a joy it is to know that you're walking with God.

So that is what I got blessed thinking about today and I thought I'd share with you my priorities in life and show you why I proudly say I am my #1 priority.