Make sure you head over to Songbird Avenue and pick up the Spring kit by Leora Sanford, Jan Crowley, and Meredith Fenwick. You’ve only got a day left; all proceeds go to ProLiteracy Worldwide. It’s a gorgeous kit — love the colors and the fresh fun designs in this one!

Lots going on around here…trying to finish up some work stuff before I head out for a three-day retreat. Just found out that I’ll be presenting at a National Conference in Washington DC this summer, so I’m looking forward to that as well.

I’ve been lamenting the fact that there are very few windows in my life right now. My office is an interior office, so I don’t have any windows at work. Our apartment is a narrow townhouse, which means we have one window next to the front door and a set of French doors at the back in the kitchen/dining area downstairs, plus two windows in the girls’ room upstairs and a door to the balcony in our room. Needless to say, I’m dying to be in a place with more windows so I can open them up and let the breeze and the smells and sounds and the LIGHT inside…

I’m feeling the tug of Spring Cleaning, of course, and all the purging and reorganizing and such that goes along with it. What I’m wanting more than anything is to be somewhere more settled. I know that we can’t buy a house right now, and won’t be able to do so for quite some time. We still have to sell our old house (not to mention repair all the damage from our burst pipe first) and then it’ll take a bit to save up and get to a good financial place from which to make a new purchase. But I’m thinking that maybe I might start looking around at some other duplexes or even houses to rent…just to see, you know. It would be nice to have something that’s all on one level, and possibly something with three bedrooms rather than two. I don’t like the prospect of moving again, but this would only be a move across town. Who knows? I’m just itching to do things — paint and hang pictures and start decorating. Even though we lived in the house in Clinton for 5 years, we never got around to doing a lot of the things that most people do to their houses — painting, new carpet, etc. I think some part of me knew we wouldn’t be there for long…

But now I’m ready to start decorating, to have a house that is mine, that looks the way I want it to look. Of course, I can’t do everything I want in a rental house/duplex, but I can make a start.

I’m going to get back to my book — I’ve started a new novel, People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks (I loved her other two, so I’ve got high hopes for this one), plus I might do a little scrapping in a bit. I’m going to take some shots of the girls on campus this afternoon — I have some fun ideas and it’s an absolutely gorgeous day, so I can’t wait. I’ll leave you with a few of the shots that I got at the zoo in Memphis a couple weekends ago. I was really excited at how they turned out.

I meant to post yesterday, but I spent all day driving around Logan County and surrounding areas for work. But let’s pretend it’s Tuesday instead of Wednesday just so I can gush and rave about the fantastic Monday night I had, y’all!

Doing what, you ask?

Rockin’ out with THIS GUY:

Yep, that’s Ben Folds (in case you didn’t know). He played at Murray State’s Lovett Auditorium as part of our Lovett Live concert series, and he put on one seriously fantastic show!

The opener, some guy named Eef Barzelay, wasn’t really my thing — but some of the crowd seemed to like him. A couple of his songs were amusing, but I just wasn’t too impressed with his overall performance. When he finished, the house lights came up and they announced that Ben had been delayed — something about a wrong turn in Beaver Dam, so we had to wait a bit…

When he arrived, he came running right out on stage and just attacked that piano — and the crowd went nuts! He went on to serenade us with our own special song — I grabbed a little bit of it on video. Check it out (click on the photo for the link):

here’s a snippet of the lyrics:

“don’t know if we’re the South or if we’re the Midwest y’all, we know that we’re not the Northeast, though — Jesus Christ came out here and made up a little rule y’all — there’ll be no beer at the BP station…we’re rockin’ this bitch at Murray…”

(most of the counties around here are dry counties — you can’t buy alcohol — welcome to the Bible Belt everybody)

He did so many great songs — Zak and Sara, Lullabye (one of my very favorites!), Still Fighting It, Bitches Ain’t Shit (which drove the crowd CRAZY!), Rockin’ the Suburbs (see below), and some new stuff from the upcoming album, which sounded really good…(click the photo)

And he even performed “The Luckiest!” I was just absolutely floored — I didn’t really expect him to sing it at all. And lucky me, I got the whole thing on video. Let me know if you want me to post it.

All in all, it was just an incredible show — so much energy and fun! One more reason why I love living in Murray!

Every time I think I’m getting into some kind of regular schedule here, it all just falls apart. What it comes down to is that, on a day-to-day basis, I’m really at a loss for what to put here. I’m not sure who’s reading — or how often — or what they expect to find when they come here. I guess, maybe I just haven’t settled in my own head what the purpose of this blog really is? Hmmmm…I shall work on that over the next few days.

In the meantime, lots has happened since I last posted. I don’t even want to think about how long ago that was — a couple of weeks, easily. Anyway, I’m now designing exclusively for ScrapinstyleTV, which is just fantastic! They have such a great group of girls there, and JJ is making some terrific changes on the site on a weekly basis. I’ve got three kits up in the store: Rockabilly, Fresh Outlook, and Apple of My Eye, so make sure you check them out.

Work is still going really well. Most of our schools are out on Spring Break either this week or next, so things are a bit slow at the moment. However, I’ve been traveling a lot lately, getting out to my schools and really working with them on using the Explore and Plan scores (pre-ACT tests, for those of you who don’t know) to create targeted services for their students. I’ve already got a list of “to-do’s” for this summer — most of them involve creating some different curriculums to put into use with our students. I’m looking forward to it, actually.

Other than that, I’ve been doing a lot of reading — make sure you check out the link to Goodreads over in the sidebar. I just love that site. I really really really do love it — it satisfies the list maker in me, as well as the overachiever and the booklover too.

I’ve been doing a lot of purging at home — still — and I’ve recently really been eyeballing my scrapbooking stash. There’s just too much stuff there. Way too much. I’ll never use it and I feel like it’s just going to waste. I have some project ideas I want to work on — I’m thinking about creating an Etsy shop. Aside from that, I think I’m going to keep my Label Tulip kits coming each month, because I love them and that’ll give me some paper stuffs to play with. But I honestly think I’m going to make the jump to all digital, with a little hybrid goodness thrown in. So keep an eye open — I may be posting some giveaways or sales or something…not sure yet.

Okay…enough blathering. If you want, leave me a little message and let me know what kind of fun things you’d like to see here and I’ll oblige.

I’m leaving Oscraps, so all of my products there will be retired as of March 16th at midnight. If there are any of my products you’ve had your eye on — word art packs, templates, kits, or more — now is the time to get them. You won’t get another chance.

We’ve had a busy couple of weeks around here. I’ve been traveling quite a bit for work, and the girls have had a number of events going on. The weekends have been nice, though. Last weekend was Cassidy’s district Governor’s Cup competition. She placed 1st as part of the Future Problem Solving team, 2nd in Language Arts, and 4th in Math, which means she’ll be moving on to compete in three contests at Regionals.

We also spent part of the weekend wandering around the local park — the weather was just incredible. It was in the mid 70s so we took advantage of it. We’ve had a lot of storms around here recently, so there were some broken branches and even whole trees knocked down.

Which brings us to today — we woke up to 5 inches or so of fresh snow. Of course, by the time I got some pictures, the girls had wandered through all of it multiple times. We just don’t get much snow here in western Kentucky, so when it started falling yesterday afternoon, you couldn’t pry us away from the windows and doors. In fact, aside from a couple of icy mornings, this is the first and only accumulating snow we’ve had here this winter.

Of course, when someone says snow, everyone runs to the grocery for fear of being snowed in. I made that trek on Thursday afternoon myself. I took off work early because I’m battling my first cold of the year — and it’s just been nasty. Anyway, while I was out, I grabbed some fresh flowers because they were just too lovely to resist.

Chris brought home some goodies too — his mom had been cleaning out the attic and came across a bunch of his old Star Wars toys. The girls have played with them nonstop since he brought them in.

I’ve also been doing some reading in the evenings — I’m working on a few Jim Butcher novels (part of the Dresden Files series). I’ve read two great novels by Geraldine Brooks recently (March, The Year of Wonders) and I’m impatiently waiting for The People of the Book to be returned to the library so I can check it out. I also just read Incantation by Alice Hoffman — another lovely novel. Make sure you check out Goodreads if you’re looking for more great books. I constantly keep mine updated.

Cassidy has been taking a drama workshop called “Box of Frogs” (don’t ask — I have no clue) at the community theatre, Playhouse in the Park. It’s a 12-week program, and she’s been able to learn about so many different aspects of the theatre. She’s played tons of improv games, learned some dances and songs, and even learned some stunts and fighting sequences. The final session was last night and the topic was makeup. I had to travel to one of my schools, in Russellville, so I didn’t get to see her in her makeup, but Chris made sure to take some pictures for me. So this is what I come home to find on my camera:

They had created this huge gash on her forehead, and then also given her a black eye — both of which looked completely realistic to me — to the point that I was kinda freaked out just by looking at it. Cass has had a wonderful time with this program, and I’m so glad that we live in Murray now where she has the opportunity to do things like this.

In other news, CHA was great! I know I haven’t updated yet — I will, very soon.

I’ve got lots of goodies up in my store at Oscraps — including 12 new word art packs (or you can opt to buy the multipack and save a few bucks on the whole collection!)

Finally, make sure you stop by and check out the Paper + Pixels blog — May and I have been posting some projects and pages all week long, as well as easy to use hybrid tips. We’d love for you to stop in, leave a comment, and let us know what you’re working on too!

I’m so thrilled about this — again, one of those secrets that has been so so so hard to hold in!!!

Make sure to check out the Dream Street Blog for more sneaks during the next two weeks — plus Kelly’s gorgeous papers today!!!

look at this!

hopefully I will be able to post  a sneak peek for you very soon!!!

in my store at Oscraps!I’ve got some great new goodies, including the chance to get some custom word art and templates from me — make sure you check them out! Also, don’t forget to stop by the MM Editor’s Blog if you haven’t yet — you could win a free copy of my book!!!

layout created with quickpage from new kit “A New Leaf”

over on the MM Editor’s Blog — check it out!!!!!!