We're back!

This spring break was one of the most amazing vacations I've ever had.  We went to Universal Studios Florida, went on lots of rides and even enjoyed the Wizarding World of Harry Potter for a day and a half.

We spent time with Grandma Lori and Grandpa Rex, with a grand game of Guesstures the first night, and they took us to a beautiful beach on Saturday for a lovely day in the sun.  We went swimming and scoured the beach for sharks teeth (I found the biggest one I've ever found!) and even swam briefly with a wild manatee who was traveling down the shore.

There's a lot going on this week, so I'm not planning on any creative projects but I've got a good little list of things to do.

1. scan film from the trip
2. pack up the winter clothes
3. organize my coupons (yes, I'm becoming "that person")

Plans, plans, and more plans.  This Thursday I have lunch with Dad and then I'll spend the afternoon helping Beth unpack and organize in her new apartment.  A week from Thursday I'll be leaving for River Falls to visit Jennie and go to the 100-mile Mississippi yard sale.  I can't wait to see Jennie, and I'm sure our adventures will be grand!  The following week Richard and I are going for our first visit at a B&B in Port Washington to celebrate my birthday and get a couple days just to ourselves.

The final weekend of May is the first Maxwell Street Days flea market of the summer.  Richard and I are  taking Chris and Tia with us.  We'll be meeting up with Beth and Ben and my Atomic Katz ladies, Deb and Sandy.  And with that the month of May is becoming quite full and exciting, especially with super secret events I can't share yet... but soon.

Spring Break Project: Reading in the Sun

I haven't posted about this next week's project yet, and there's a good reason for it - we're going on vacation!  This week is spring break and Richard's parents are taking us along with Richard's brother Chris and his girlfriend Tia to Florida.

What a wonderful way to spend spring break - where the sun is shining and it's lovely and warm!  We'll be visiting Richard's grandparents and family but we're also going to Universal's Wizarding World of Harry Potter which I couldn't be more excited about!  I grew up with those books and I have enjoyed them throughly and I think the theme park will be quite fun.

I guess this is a round about way of saying that my only project this week will be reading, and I plan on getting a lot of reading done while we're in transit.  I've already finished two of the five books that Caitlin loaned to me, but I'm going to take a couple of my own books for the trip - I certainly don't want to lose borrowed books while on vacation.

The Office: Lighting Set-Up

Recently I've been working on making our office a better place to work.  The major cleaning and organizing was the first step and the second was to put together a lighting set up so I could do product photos under the window and walk a few feet to the desk and load them onto the computer to work on.  It's not perfect yet, I have another bar to hang up for better light placement, but I've gotten a few photos done and I'm happy I've finally got a permanent set-up and it's out of the way.

The entire set-up wasn't very costly either.  We already had the table, and the floor lamps were once in our living room so I can't really tally those in the cost.

- White sheet - from Ikea $2

- Four clamp lamps - from the hardware store $5 each, but one of my was scavenaged

- Four light bulbs - I use the GE indoor flood natural lights which are $5 each but promise to last a long time, plus you can often find coupons so I only paid $3 each.

Grand Total: $34

But not having to wait until I've got good light coming in the window is priceless, and it means I can get clear and crisp shots any time I need.  Here are some more photos of a Salt Box I picked up while out thrifting recently.

So much in just one week!

Well, this past week was certainly not conducive to projects even if we packed in quite a lot of other things.  Richard and I traveled up to Oshkosh to go on gallery walk last Saturday and spent most of the time talking with friends before going out to our old haunt for drinks afterwards.  It was just so wonderful to see so many friends, and really makes me miss that small town I used to live in.

Work was a little weird this week, the family I work for had a family emergency, so my schedule was a bit mucked up.  And to top it all off I seem to have "grown into" allergies again so my head has been stuffy for the past week as spring seems to have finally arrived.

I did manage to get down to the Milwaukee Art Museum for Free First Thursday and visited with Pam, one of my old university professors, who had brought a group of her current students.

We have some wonderful neighbors next door, Tom and Amy, who have become great friends.  Richard and Tom used to work together at Apple and in the span of a couple months we both happened to move into the same apartment complex, and it just so happened that the two empty units were right next door to one another.  It's been quite handy to have friends so close by, we take care of each others' pets and water the gardens.  Last week Tom's younger brother Brandon was visiting for spring break so I spent Friday hanging out with him and we bopped around to a few thrift stores to keep our day busy.

Today though, I have no work, and we spent Sunday doing laundry and all the spring cleaning so there's not much more to do around the house.  We even cleaned out the whole garden (all twelve square feet of it) and all my crocuses and iris have begun to bloom and even the tulips are peeking out!
After I talk to our building manager about checking the AC unit (one day of warm weather and the pipes in the basement are already sweating!) I'm going to spend the afternoon taking photos, which I suppose will be my project for this week.

Pillow Project Part 1 of 3

I promise I got my project done this week, really, I do!  It was just as time consuming as I thought it would be but I quickly got into a rhythm and I think the next couple should go just a little bit quicker.  But I also sorely underestimated how many buttons I would need so I may be on the hunt for a few more in the coming weeks.

Here is a vaguely decent iphone photo, because I've run out of time to take a better photo this week.  And we're off to Oshkosh today!  I'm so excited to see friends, and have great Thai food and go on Gallery Walk.

This coming week I want to sew up the "&" pillow and do the "R" monogram.