Our mini-weekend

Big P and I had our wonderful mini-weekend and returned home tonight. The reason that I say it was our mini-weekend is because my gracious in-laws watched our 4 oldest children from Friday at 1 until we picked them up Saturday evening. We stayed at a local hotel for the night that was close to their home. We just did normal stuff. Costco was on our list of things to do to exchange an item, so we did that together and had a wonderful time just browsing, without anyone really needing our attention. A.2m.B. was with us, of course, but he just enjoyed being in the slingezee the whole time.

We ate yummy food and Big P bought me some new outfits, but most of all we just enjoyed talking uninterrupted. Our main discussion was on our upcoming Planning weekend, which I will have to post about later.

Last week big P even brought me roses!!!! Pics of that will be in my July roundup and photo a day post.

It's good to be home, but most of all we are just glad to have our babies back. It's funny how you really want a little break, but you can miss them sooooo much. C.12.B. had been away from us all week, while helping at a day camp at Dallas Heritage Village. He stayed with my in-laws and they took him back and forth.

Busy week coming up...

Let's Get Organized Seminar

You all know how much I love audios. I was introduced to seminars on my iPod via Cindy Rushton. That was about 3 years ago. I was just sharing with a friend the other day about an audio I was recently listening to, from The Ultimate Home School Expo. I told her about Christie Berry and she said "I recognize that name, I wonder if it was through Cindy Rushton." Sure enough, she had also bought a ticket to the Ultimate Home School Expo and was listening to all the audios.

Cindy is great. She is fun to listen to, always has an encouraging word, and is challenging as well. I never leave without something to chew on. She picks the greatest guest speakers, too.

She has a seminar this weekend for getting organized for your school year.

Here's a link to the website, but I'm going to post the information in here as well.

The fun starts tomorrow with preview chats.

Tuesday, July 8, 2008

1PM CST

F* R* E* E*!

Let's Get Organized for the New School Year!

Cindy Rushton from Http://www.CindyRushton.com

Talk-a-Latte Online Conference Room

(See our complete Summer Preview Chat Schedule here: http://BacktoSchoolBlast.com/)

Scheduled Start Time:
11:00 AM Pacific Time
12:00 PM Mountain Time
1:00 PM Central Time
2:00 PM Eastern Time

How to Join Us Online in Our Conference Room...

We provide the software download-free. Here is the link:

http://www.cindyrushton.com/Conference.exe

Click to begin download or copy/paste into your internet browser and click ENTER. It will only take a few minutes to download into your computer, but you want to do it ahead of time so you don't miss a minute in the Conference Room. After it is downloaded on your computer, it will set up an icon on your desktop that says CONFERENCE. Then, you will only have to click it to open up the room. Here are your instructions from there:

When you are ready to enter, you will enter your NAME or EMAIL ADDRESS in the first blank.

Add the following information when prompted:

Name of Room: Talk-a-Latte
Password: letschat (password is case sensitive-do not enter any extra characters or spaces-password is only in effect during the actual chat) Remember...your password is different for chats and other classes. It only works for the room when the room is open for the study.

This Weekend--July 11-12

Let's Get Organized for the New School Year Virtual Seminar!

Sign up today to join us live (just register with your name/email for us to send you the passwords and schedule updates) or grab a ticket for access to our

Membership Site AND free ebooks/audios!

Sign up here: http://www.CindyRushton.com/LGO2008.html

blissful morning layout

I made this digital layout today using a freebie called Blissful Morning I picked up at Raspberry Road Designs. This is a great site with TONS of freebies and beautiful, inexpensive kits.

I've done about 8 scrapbook pages so far and I had some printed. I was impressed with the finished versions after printing at Costco. Great price - best I have found yet.

I'd love to know what you think.

"Back up your hard drive" Friday

I'm in the process of backing up my entire computer. I wouldn't have been this "willing" to give up my computer for a couple of days, but DH is a generous man and bought me a new one! He had "ulterior" motives, sort of. He needs a personal computer as he can't do much on his work one. But mostly he wanted to get me one because I run a lot of stuff on my computer and use it for everything, as previously mentioned in another post. I needed a dual core for it to run properly. But, I digress.

So, I ran across this article (most of my family is out picking up our raw milk, hence the time to sit here and read) and it really set me on fire to get this done. I literally have THOUSAND of photos on my computer and hard drives. We actually have two external hard drives - the regular 250 g will be mine for scrapbooking. The other is a mac time capsule that we use to network all of our computers together with the printer.

Check out the article. I hope it fires you up!

June Roundup

What books and/or magazines did I read this month?

I'm very proud, as I read The Old Schoolhouse magazine front to back (okay, so it was the Spring edition). I also started reading Homeschooling at the Speed of Life, Love Comes Softly, and almost finished The Busy Mom's Guide to Simple Living.

What movies and/or tv shows did I watch this month?

The Girl of the Limberlost was a surprisingly good movie. We are enjoying the list that Nancy Campbell sent out. I will post that soon. I did a couple of revisions, and took off movies that were on our "no no" list. This list is compiled by Nancy, but were recommendations from many many women. Each family has their own standards, so that needs to be remembered. Most of the movies were available from Netflix.

What special days did I celebrate and how?

We had a nice Father's Day with Big P. We visited the nursing home and sang together with them, before and after Big P gave a message.

Big P's birthday was on the 29th, but we didn't get to spend much of it together. :( They were on their way home from Rockport most of the time.

What gifts did I give and/or receive?

My children are always making me things, so I know I pinned up a couple of pictures.

I was able to give some thank you gifts to Tanya and her mom for coordinating the scrapbook weekend for us. They were little tin mailboxes covered with scrapbook paper and stickers with their initials on them. I thought they turned out adorable, and both of them were surprised and thankful. It was nice to give something unexpected.

What illnesses or health concerns did I have?

Thank you Jesus for continued good health!

What fun things did I do with my friends and/or family?

I took the bigger 3 children to the IMAX theatre to see Dolphins and Whales in 3D. That was very exciting. We also had VBS at church, which was lots of fun for everyone. I got some chatty time with other mamas. For our pre-Father's Day celebration, we went to the lake for a few hours, had a picnic and played in the water! And of course, the scrapbook weekend was a blast.

What new foods, recipes or restaurants did I try this month?

We tried the Saving Dinner freebie frugal menu. I've enjoyed all the recipes and they were easy to make. On Father's Day we had a nice lunch at Applebee's. We've been there before, but a dinner out is always a treat.

What special or unusual purchases did I make?

I purchased our George Foreman standing indoor grill. It can also go on the counter. We've used it a few times and really like it. It's a bit harder to clean, just because of the size (it's HUGE), but we are pleased!

I also "splurged" and bought myself a new blog design.

What were this month's disappointments?

Feeling a bit "ahead" and then plummeting into feeling "behind" in the day to day tasks that need to be taken care of.

What were my accomplishments this month?

We did establish what seems to be a great routine for cleaning the house. It is just a matter of some sticktoitiveness!

Anything else noteworthy to record?

I discovered digital scrapbooking through some friends at the scrapbook weekend. I'm hooked and have already made 6 pages for our Missouri trip. It's very portable and I can stop and start as needed. Love it!

Also, I had previously planned to have a planning weekend by myself in the Rv getting some necessary things done to start our new school year in August. Instead, after hearing some incredible messages on the Ultimate Home School Expo, and listening to one about Purposeful Planning, I asked Big P about us doing a planning weekend as a family to get our family goals and plans in order. So I'm about to make reservations for us to go to the campground where I went last year (just up the road) and we will hang together. This is the park where we were going to be staying when we were planning to do the debt free in the RV thing.

Monthly Roundup info

In my search for scrapbook info, I found this great website. One of the posts was really inspiring to me. It was especially fitting, because I watched Tanya scrapbook her pictures in chronological order the other day. It was great the way that she whipped through them.

I thought this was perfect, because it would give an overall picture that you could start your that month's section of your scrapbook off with.

Here's the link for the roundup info:

Monthly Roundup Info

My First Layout

I created this with the help of the Scrapbook Software Secrets Revealed Course for Photoshop Elements 6.0. These little videos are incredibly helpful and make this seem sooo easy.

These aren't necessarily the colors that I would have picked, but they came with the course and I wanted to follow along, thus, I used them. I don't think it's necessarily the colors, I just really don't care for that green funky looking boarder behind the photo.

This wasn't hard, a bit time consuming at first, but not hard. Learning takes time, but I really get the gist of it and think that I could easily pump out some layouts for our Missouri trip - my next project.

Let me know what you think...