A Happy Heart for Thanksgiving 2011

Happy Thanksgiving from the McLemore's

and the Maxwell's

and the Greene's.....

I love getting together with my family.  This isn't all of us, but we had a great time. The weather was beautiful, the food bountiful and laughter plenty.

Maybe this year means more as my grandparents (in the middle, Grandad in the grey suit and Grandmother in the white shirt with the cane) are in their upper 90's. Just last week Grandad was in the hospital.  I know that these special moments are fleeting.

My dad's dad, my Papa, died 23 years ago on Thanksgiving day.  I remember the day with such clarity you would think it was just last year.  Maybe that's why Thanksgiving is such an important day to me. 

I hope you had the opportunity to be with those you love on this special day of the year.

You Can Never Go Home Again... Or Can You?

 We bought a house and we are moving!!

Well, we bought the house about six years ago or so, but yes, we are moving back to our old house.

It's interesting how life works. 

We thought the house had sold, we moved out the first week of June and the buyer moved in and was to rent our house from us until his house sold.

Well, with the market and all that... his house didn't sell.  So out he goes and we go back.

It could have been a disappointment.  But it's not.

We found that we love our house.  We missed our house.  The girls asked every day to go home.

So now we are going home. 

But I painted a number of rooms and we got new carpet, so it feels like a new house.

Yeah for us. 

No buyers remorse for us :)

Scrapbooking Made Easy, it's all in the Method!

As you all know by now, I'm a busy woman.

So I have had to figure out how to streamline some things along the way.

One of those is basic scrapbook pages.

By streamlining the method of creation, I have more time for my favorite part...

EMBELLISHMENTS!

So while you may be tired of my preaching easy scrapbook pages, I just can't stop myself :)

To start, choose 10 patterns and 12 pieces of cardstock that go together. 

Plus you will need base pages of white or cream depending on your color scheme.

 Here are my chosen pages.
Notice that my pieces of cardstock are really papers with a dominant color and a small pattern!!

The next step is to choose a set of page layouts that you like.  

Most of mine templates are taken from Close To My Heart's template books.

In fact, all of the layouts for this set come from Imagine.

To be honest, one of my very strange quirks is that I LOVE to take the layouts and place them on paper
and see how many layouts I can make with a little paper as possible. 

So while some of you might groan, I live for graphing paper!!

Once I have my cutting guides ready, I cut the paper.  The biggest part of the learning curve is to

 NOT STRESS over which page is which!

It's all part of the game.

As you cut your paper, label each piece in pencil and then when finished sort into piles.

Below you can see my pieces sorted with white between each grouping.

The first time you do this, it will take some work. 

You won't like some of the pages. 

In the midst of trying to figure out what to do you, you will be taking my name in vain!

But when you figure it out, well...

Then it is FUN!!

All of the above layouts were pieced and placed in the span of about three hours.

That's 18 12x12 pages.

That's enough to fill a gift book.

Plus, I had a good bit of scrap paper to use for journal blocks, embellishments and so forth.

So, if you haven't tried this type of scrapbooking, try it!

In fact, I'll teach you how.

Stay tuned for more details....

Some do it in a year, for me, I'm taking 10!

The sum total of my life.

I downloaded a plan to read the bible in a year.

That was more than a year ago.  I'm on week 6.

Acknowledging that my life is not going ot get any simpler or easier...

I'm going to give myself 10 years.

Whoever developed the One Year Bible approach was not a full-time working outside the home mother of three.

If you are a full-time working outside the home mom and want my 10 year plan, let me know.  Maybe we can motivate each other.

Just don't expect me to call you every week or anything like that.

Well, I'm off to read Exodus 19.  

Can't wait to show you my certificate of completion in 2021!

Life, 24/200, and Pinterest

I just realized how long it has been since I was last on here. One of these days I am going to feel like I have my feet under me and can do fun things again.  I'm not there yet.

So what's been going on in our world?

Well, to begin, Doug left his old investment company and started his own financial company!! Exciting times.  A little scary, but every risk comes with reward and it was time for him to be the guy that made the decisions about his future!!

Moving a financial services business is a lot of behind the scenes work and a quick move in the end, so we have been very focused on starting McLemore Financial Group.

If you need any financial advise, call Doug at 254-968-1020!!

What else is going on?  Just school and life.  Maddie was sick most of last week.  A little "innocent" 24 hour sore throat for most people becomes a week-long yucky time for Mad. After she had been sick for four days I took her to the doctor, but the doctor was booked solid, so they did a nurse visit to check her urine and do a strep test.  The strep test was negative and thankfully her urine looked good.  Then the nurse asked the regular questions and did the nice nurse talk. Thanks.  I really wanted to ask her if she had looked at Maddie's chart.  But I didn't, I just pointed out that the 24 hour virus she was talking about had passed long before. It gets old and tiring.  My sister is a WONDERFUL nurse, so I really try to be more patient with medical people because I truly know that they have the patients well-being in the forefront of their mind, however, there are times when I really just want to say... LOOK AT HER CHART!!!

Okay, sorry about the want. Maddie is well now :)

Next on the agenda, progress reports went out Thursday.  Lexi beat Maddie's grades!  Maddie did point out that 6th grade is much harder than 1st grade and Lexi pointed out that Maddie had missed almost a full week of school.  Nonetheless, Lexi was rather proud of her three 100's, a 99 and a 98.  Maddie didn't do to shabby either with two 100's and a lowest greade of a 96.  As a teacher, I couldn't help myself and told them to remember that this was just a progress report and that the official grade would come later and that I expected similar grades to show up there....

I am so thankful to have children that do so well in school. It is a huge blessing!

And how am I doing?  Well, thanks for asking.  I am doing okay.  I am still in the learning the new routine phase of the year.  My students are really good and my program is really off to a great start this year, but me, well, I'm struggling.

However, it is getting better and as I sat in a meeting on Thursday, I realized why.

Have you heard of the 24/200 concept?  Well, studies show that it takes doing something 24 times to do it proficiently.  But it takes doing something 200 times to make it routine.  So here I am with a new schedule and a new curriculum and feeling overwhelmed every day.  Of course I am! We are only on day.. well I don't know, but it's not day 24 yet.  So thinking about this has made me stop beating myself up for being exhausted and overwhelmed and given me hope.  It is getting better, and it will continue to be so.

I like this concept so much, that I think I'm going to make a 24/200 banner and put it up in my classroom.  Students are constantly asking why they have to draw something they have already drawn, explaining gets old.. but a banner, I could point to and say remember.... :)

 And lastly, in all the crazies of the days, I started using pinterest.  I wasn't going to as I knew it would be addicting.  I've looked at it a number of times and such, but this week a friend of mine was showing me what she was doing and I just couldn't resist any longer. 

For those of you that don't know what Pinterest is, well, it's a virtual pinboard.  It's like sticky notes to use in a catalog.  It makes looking at cool pictures way easier, becuase when you find something you love or want to use, you don't have to do the right click save to folder thing and then never find it again.  With pinterest, you pin it or like it and it puts it on your board and has the direct link for you! So when you want to go to the source, you double click you picture and it takes you to the website the picture was first posted at!

Isn't that SO COOL!!!!!  



Well, Kylie just came in throwing a 2 year old tantrum and Doug saying "YOU ARE DONE" (to Kylie, not me) so I better go!

Next installment: an update on our housing drama.