The Slop Chest - A Little Bit of Everything

For the First Time.......

Since leaving him last February I laid eyes on my husband.

I had three thoughts in this order....

1. WOW- He looks so old. I mean seriously he looks like he has aged 7-10 years in the last near five months. I was shocked to say the least and no, I'm not saying it to mean.
2. OMG - He looks so miserable. I mean it is his MO so no surprise there, and I'm happy to no longer be entangled in the mess.

and...

3. I truly hope he is doing alright, even as I still struggle for forgiveness, it is my greatest wish for this man.

I just had one of those moments of clarity when everything fell into perspective.

Tomorrow is the 25th

I'm really wondering where June disappeared to but good things are happening on the horizon so It's all good. Tomorrow is the 25th and that means.....
Do something different, see your everyday world through the viewfinder of your camera and experience the beauty in the small things. Visit Shimelles blog for the scuttlebutt on this challenge.

Inspired Day One (Thursday 10 April)

Catch up continues......

So not wanting to risk missing a single second of anything we were up early to scope out the scene. Donna & Bill had basically reserved what seemed like about half the ground floor of the hotel for this event. The line was already forming to check in and sign up for workshops. We could have been giddy teenagers waiting to buy concert tickets to the latest boy band, I mean seriously, seriously.

Anyway, never wanting to miss a thing we were the 3rd people in line. It was here that we first met the lovely Cameron, who had just returned from Italy and had recently moved to Northern VA! And then..."Oh my heck", While we were waiting who walks into the arena???? CATHY ZIELSKEI! Hello, I almost fainted! Cathy you are so damn adorable but I have to know, why do you insist on dressing like you're preggo? Baby you've got what it takes stop with the weight obsession and show off your assets girl! Anyway, we didn't have our cameras with us. That's right, how unprepared could we be at this point? Luckily for us we had also met in line the vivacious Christiane from Seattle who snapped some photos for us and came through like a champ emailing them to us after the event. Let me just say Cathy Z was most gracious, we shared a Tim Tam reminiscent moment, got the shot and I headed back to our place in line.

Finally the gates were opened and we were all welcomed into the Downey fold. Donna's ENTIRE family was there supporting her and lending a hand to make the event a success. It was amazing to see. We were given our green inspired messenger bags which were filled with some random swag items! And we were issued our hand made name badges!

A complete success at signing up for our five mini workshops our work for the moment was done. We headed out, with an ATM pit stop, for CVS to print photos and to grab a bite and pick up some last minute supplies. We made it back in plenty of time for the kick off dinner/meeting. Donna INSPIRED us from the get go, she introduced the instructors would be working with throughout our amazing journey. We also got our first glimpse of Heather Bailey, almost had to pick Stella up off the floor, before it was off to the first of our mini workshops.

The first project we signed up for was hosted by Heather Ruwe of the Scrapbook Bakery, who BTW packages kits in adorable PINK Pastry boxes, how clever and cute, though I did not buy any. Heather's project was a Creative Block Survival Guide, a little booklet filled with ideas to get the creativity flowing in a time of need. The end result is very cute and is now a permanent fixture on my Inspired Bag.  Our second mini workshop was hosted by Holly Pittroff. We constructed paper flowers for a gift card holder that all culmnated in a chinesse food take out box. Pretty cool though I'm not sure if I would be using it as intended. Only drawback here was the snotty adhesive, YEOWZERS! Not to mention by this hour we were both pretty beat and might I even sugest somewhat cranky? All in all an Excellent first day! 

Better Late Than Never....The Skinny on Donna Downey's Inspired Event

It's literally at least 500 degrees out here & since I basically melt in any temperature over 75, I figured today would be a good day to sit inside the nice cool AC and catch up on some missing posts.

Last summer when my life was 180 different than it is today, Donna Downey announced that she was hosting her self created event, "The Inspired Artist Workshop". Since I basically L-O-V-E Donna's work I quicky recruited Stella & marked my calendar for the day registration was to open. Seven months later the long anticipated event had arrived.

First let me throw out a HUGE bouquet of gratitude to my sweet Stella! At the time Inspired rolled around all my crap was still packed in boxes & completely inaccessible. Stella, being no different from every other artist/crafter in the world, has supplies in duplicate/triplicate and graciously double packed everything making sure I had my own supply kit. Thanks again Stell, Love U lots!

Anyway, our original plan was to head down to Charlotte on Thursday however, seeing the widespread panic on the message board regarding signing up for mini workshops, we changed our plans and decided to head out on Wednesday night. Stella rolled in with Scarlett in the late afternoon. One Waffle House pit stop later we were underway. I feel I'd be remiss here if I didn't mention that Stella was in rare form on this part of the trip. Since she had already driven almost 6 hours to get to VB I took the wheel for the second leg of the journey. Let me tell you, someone was as nervous as sea captain on their first trip in the big chair. Note to Stella, I USED to own a MINI, I've had a drivers license for 20 years, I've driven the east coast more times than I can count. Sit back, relax, & quit it with the attempt at micromanaging. Sorry babe, it had to be said, don't pull an H on me.

Anyway, after Google Maps proved that somethings just never do change, ie: they still suck, we arrived at The Embassy Suites. Our room was on the Penthouse level, not sure how that happened, but SWEET! Stella went to park the car and when she came back in she nonchalantly says "Oh, I ran into Donna in the parking lot." LIKE IT WAS NOTHING! Hello! You just ran into Donna? She's like a superhero! Later I found out Cathy Z was with her at the time! What??? How jealous was I?

Anyway, the first night at the hotel was spiced up with our feisty loud neighbor who clearly was away from his wife for the first time in decades and felt the need to speak about his recent experience at Hooters in a yell peppered with some foul language. Since Stella had brought me earplugs in order to ensure the quality of my rest, (she has traveled with me before & knows a cranky CB is not a good thing), I missed a good portion of this guys shenanigans.

The skinny on the first day of the event to soon follow.............

Seriously Unexpected

 This girl.... it's odd how life works out in ways we can't & don't plan for. I have very few female friends. The nature of my job has never allowed it. The friends I do have all live in far away places. Then this chick comes along and it was instant. God has a weird way of filling our lives with what we need even though we don't expect it. Seriously... I'm just grateful for what I have been blessed with.

May 25th

To be perfectly honest I didn't do much of anything with the 25th day experiment for May. For one I completely lost track of the days. I was traveling and there was the holiday....I considered doing photos on the 26th but that's not really the point.

So I am posting the one shot I took.

These two handsome boys belong to my brother. Their mom is Allison's dog, Siren. Scooby just adores them and it's a welcome change actually seeing her get on with other dogs, (as long as they are big she seems to deal).

I'm also somewhat in between cameras. In April I bought a Nikon Cool Pix. It took really beautiful shots however it was basically too small to comfortably maneuver. I've since gone back to my old stand by a Sony Cybershot, albeit the new & improved version. I'm still figuring it out however, I will definitely be ready for the 25th of June. So bear with me and stay tuned.

It's On Baby!!!!

 
Except for the one glaringly obvious reason
($)
Why the hell not?

After all I AM FREE !!!!!!!!!

Pretend I Posted This On Time

The 25th has come and gone, I'll soon post my results, May has a different twist, come back and see...

Twenty Photos for the 25th Day

So I had to cheat a little on the 25th day challenge. I opened the email at work and luckily I had my camera with me, unluckily the battery was shot. I got off a few photos before it died completely so I improvised with Photo Booth and then extended my experiment into the 26th Day. I picked the best 20 to add to my Picasa Web Albums, (the photos there have my captions). Then I got the brilliant idea to make a slide show in iphoto. I finally got it uploaded to You Tube but the photo quality isn't quite as nice. It's viewers choice on where you look at them. I have to say there is basically no chance in hell these are seeing a scrapbook anytime soon, I am however enjoying the process and the results.

Something New *** Something Just 4 ME!

The PA Inspired girls challenged us to take part in this.

It just so happens I have my camera with me, albeit not fully charged. I'm still going to see what I come up with and what I can do with it.

So here goes on the first of 12 camera days. My goal: finding Beauty in the everyday & being Bulletproof, as we know from Kal's class we should be.

Guidelines are on Shimelle's Blog.

I'll share the results in my Picasa Web Albums and post the link when it's ready.