the game plan

At this point in my life I have a lot of “options.” There are lots of pros and cons to the different potential routes and I’m proud to say I have made a decision!

My plan a few days ago was to take my time, enjoy being in school with Cam, work at the job I currently have for as long as I could because of its “cushy” nature (location, pay, people, etc.) I was content to do this because doing an internship, a full load of classes, and another 2 jobs on top of that for the summer just doesn’t sound very fun. It also isn’t humanly possible. Believe me. I checked.

My plan before that was to do the humanly impossible, and finish in December. That plan lasted until I mapped out my schedule for the summer and realized that working 40 hours a week and taking the equivalent of 18 credit hours in a single term just wasn’t going to happen. I got tired and depressed just thinking about it. So we reverted back to the “April” plan. And I took the countdown off my blog in a huff of disgust.

Here’s the exciting part. . .

The Countdown is Back!

See that cute little frog gaily leaping across the purple flowers? He’s counting down to me being done with school in December! Woo!

General Conference spoke volumes to me this year. We are taught to be balanced. That means you can’t be 100% at a job and 100% at school at the same time. It doesn’t work like that. You only have 100% (or sometimes 110%) of yourself to give. So I maturely and securely decided to stay within my limits and devised a plan where I could still graduate in December without absolutely killing myself. I asked Cameron what he thought of my plan at about 11:45 right before we fell asleep. His response was “I really wish you wouldn’t bring things like that up right before we go to bed.” Hahahaha. But in all seriousness, he is so encouraging of everything I want to do. I’m a lucky lady.

*Drumroll*

Here’s the plan!
During spring term I will be:
Working 20 hours at my internship (which is a class)
Working 10 hours at my paying job (so we don’t starve)
Taking 2 classes
-Family History (last religion class!)
-Writing about art and the humanities (let’s hear it for procrastinated generals)
for a total of 5 credit hours.

Summer term my class load is reduced to 3 credit hours. And by starting my internship this early, I should be finished with it in July-giving me all of August to have a REAL summer. It’s not much but I’m stoked to be realistically finishing in December.

After that, I just have one full 15 credit hour semester to take-and I’m DONE!

Just thought I’d letchya know. :)

Making Progress. . .

I think I've let my blog suffer a little bit, but I really have been [making progress]! Here's an overview of the scrapbooking I've managed to get done in the past couple weeks.

"lanky, claw-toed, gorilla babies" -Jessica McGuire

Cameron jammed his left [big] toe while playing basketball on Christmas day. It has been appropriately rotting for the past 3 and a half months. He played in our ward's intramural basketball game last week and squished that purple toenail up against his shoe. Apparently his toenail had had enough because it stood straight up and started causing lots of pain. ouch!

Cam asked me what I thought he should do. I told him to shower so it was clean and wouldn't get infected. Ask me if we even have band-aids. nope. He got out of the shower and put some pjs on, [so I could take pictures]. :) but really, I snapped a couple with my phone and spent the rest of the time gagging in the corner. [I got my mom's gag reflex...really, it's genetic] He finally pulled it off which made his face look like this. :)

Poor guy!

I think this only goes to prove Jessica's point when she labled me and Cameron's future children as "lanky, claw-toed, gorilla babies." Thanks Jess.

There once was a girl at BYU...

...who had so many hobbies she didn't know which to do!

I believe I have taken things a bit to the extreme this time. A few weeks ago it occurred to me that science classes are hard. And a husband who takes 3 of those science classes in a single semester (soon to be 4 or 5. yikes!) has lots of studying that has to get done every night.

So.

I got a hobby.

or 4.

1. You have all experienced my new found appreciation and LOVE for digital scrapbooking. I do adore it. And when else in your life do you have an excuse to have hundreds of pictures of you and your gorgeous husband looking fabulous?!

2. I had a sudoku obsession last year. I had this one book The Sudoku Code that came out during the Da Vinci Code fad and it absolutely blew my mind. Each spread inside has a sudoku puzzle with numbers and a "wordoku" puzzle, with 9 letters that spell a phrase. There's one square in the sudoku puzzle that's circled. When you finish that puzzle, you circle the rest of the numbers that are the same as the one in the circled square and then solve the wordoku. When you solve that puzzle, you circle the same squares that are circled in the sudoku puzzle. Then! the whole thing spells out a message through the entire book, which then tells you to do something completely different. Well-last year I finished half the book and then lost it. So-when I decided I needed a hobby I looked on Amazon and found it for $3. fantastic. I'm now on puzzle set 12 of 100.

3. Last thanksgiving (before me and Cam decided we don't really "do" thanksgiving anymore) we had a bit of car trouble and ended up staying in AZ longer than we had originally planned. We decided to spend the extra time watching the first season of lost. This has now become a common activity before bed. We're smack in the middle of season 3 and go to bed so anxious because they never give you any answers but the stupid hopeful part of me half expects it to make sense in the end. Does Lost addict count as a hobby? I think so.

4. Finally! I decided a few months ago that I wanted to learn how to quilt. I went to the quilting shop that's 4 blocks from our apartment and got super inspired and drastically overwhelmed at the same time. I decided to make a quilt as my summer project. Lo and behold, out of the sky comes the lovely Danielle Sanders who just happens to quilt all the time! So now I have a good friend who knows what she's doing and can help me figure out what I'm doing! I also went running today and on my way home saw that the quilting store was having an insane sale for the next hour! I went in and took tabs on how much everything cost. I went home and found the pattern I wanted (which happens to be on this super cute blog) took off for the store again and found 9 coordinating fabrics and thread for my mom's serger. All for under $25. (Money I had from selling my clothes to Plato's closet.)

*sigh*

it's going to be an awesome summer.

Digital Scrapbooking.

A lot of you lovely ladies have been asking how to get into digital scrapbooking. I’ve tried to respond to as many of you as I could, but I figured it would just be best to post it here so you can always come back to refer to it.

*deep breath*

Here goes!

I personally use Photoshop to put my pages together. Any photo manipulation software will work, but photoshop seriously lets you do ANYTHING you want. Worth every little pretty penny it costs. (if you’re a student you can get a CRAZY discount by ordering through the bookstore)

I have a few favorite sites I use. www.shabbyprincess.com (click on downloads) has tons of free papers/embellishments/alphabets etc. it's fantastic. :) They are also good to use when you're first starting out because they give them to you in "Collections" that help you see what goes together well. When you get more comfortable with it all, pull stuff from different collections and go crazy! :)

Another site I use for inspiration is www.scrapbook.com click on gallery>digital layouts>favorites These are pages other people have filtered through and marked as their favorite. There's some AWESOME stuff there, and if you want to figure out how to do something, just ask. They're pretty good about getting back to you with what they did. Scrapbook.com also has a newsletter you can sign up for that gives you something free every week. (papers/embellishments/etc.) I have NEVER paid for anything for digital scrapbooking.

The site I use for fonts is www.1001freefonts.com. It's fantastic. It might take you a bit to figure out how to install this on your computer, but it's worth it. :)

One other site I would mention is www.brusheezy.com It has photoshop brushes with everything you can imagine and can really make some cute touches on your page.


(ex. The brown swirl on this page is a brush.)

Last site I promise! www.scrapbooksetc.com>free collage templates.
How to make super cute multi picture layouts in pretty much no time at all. :) worth a look for sure!

Because of the response I got from posting just that one page, I’ve been considering starting a digital scrapbooking blog where I can let everyone know the cool new things I find and post pages of my current projects. I would love for it to be like a community effort where others (you!) can post pages too and we can all inspire each other. Answer the poll up at the top and let me know what you think!

A little bit of the "how to's"

A lot of you lovely ladies have been asking how to get into digital scrapbooking. I’ve tried to respond to as many of you as I could, but I figured it would just be best to post it here so you can always come back to refer to it.

*deep breath*

Here goes!

I personally use Photoshop to put my pages together. Any photo manipulation software will work, but photoshop seriously lets you do ANYTHING you want. Worth every little pretty penny it costs. (if you’re a student you can get a CRAZY discount by ordering through the bookstore)

I have a few favorite sites I use. www.shabbyprincess.com (click on downloads) has tons of free papers/embellishments/alphabets etc. it's fantastic. :) They are also good to use when you're first starting out because they give them to you in "Collections" that help you see what goes together well. When you get more comfortable with it all, pull stuff from different collections and go crazy! :)

Another site I use for inspiration is www.scrapbook.com click on gallery>digital layouts>favorites These are pages other people have filtered through and marked as their favorite. There's some AWESOME stuff there, and if you want to figure out how to do something, just ask. They're pretty good about getting back to you with what they did. Scrapbook.com also has a newsletter you can sign up for that gives you something free every week. (papers/embellishments/etc.) I have NEVER paid for anything for digital scrapbooking.

The site I use for fonts is www.1001freefonts.com. It's fantastic. It might take you a bit to figure out how to install this on your computer, but it's worth it. :)

One other site I would mention is www.brusheezy.com It has photoshop brushes with everything you can imagine and can really make some cute touches on your page.


(ex. The brown swirl on this page is a brush.)

Last site I promise! www.scrapbooksetc.com>free collage templates.
How to make super cute multi-picture layouts in pretty much no time at all. :) worth a look for sure!

Just FYI

My parents are finally on the blogging network! YAY.
McGuire Family Blog