Christine Adolph

I don't know how I have managed to go this long without seeing this woman's artwork, but she is a genius! You can check out her work for yourself here. I just love her use of natural elements and color and texture - brilliant! She's the inspiration for the altered/collage challenge at Scrapartist this week, so I created my own piece inspired by her fabulous style!

I used Carrie Stephens fantastic Xpressions backgrounds for most of this - they're so rich and the colors are wonderful, just perfect for artsy, "quirky" stuff like this! A lot of her papers are actually great for this style, but it's really cool to get a whole pack of this kind of papers from her. If you're interested you can pick them up at Fishscraps in the clearance section for only $4!

Three Monitors!

That's right, count them, three monitors now sit on my desk at work! Our computer guy came and installed them today. It's crazy! I can have so much going on now and keep it all open in front of me. Really, for me, I think two probably would have done the trick, but I'm sure I'll find myself a good use for the third LOL! It really is cool to be able to keep the document I'm working on open and have the court record and Westlaw open at the same time. And, I'm thinking it will be pretty nice for the occasional lunch-time scrapping adventure too :) So, that's the big news for today - thought I'd share! Oh, and Bob's first day at work went pretty well too - the only bad part was that it was almost 100 degrees here yesterday. When I asked how it went, he said "it was hot" - poor guy. But, it's supposed to cool down through the week, so hopefully that aspect will get better for him.

New Schedule

Today is Bob's first day at the new job! It felt a little like the first day of school at our house last night - we bought him some new jeans to wear to work, so he was trying those on and getting everything together - all the things you have to do when you start something new. And, he has to be to work pretty early, so we got up a little after 5am today! That's a little early for me LOL! So, I went back to bed for about an hour and still had time to go to the gym before work. I really like to workout in the morning, so I think I'm going to start doing that more now that he'll be working so early in the day so we have more time at night. The only bad part is that I have to decide on what to wear before I go and that can be quite a production - I'm so indecisive sometimes LOL! Anyway, it's nice to have that already done for the day :)

Hopefully Bob's day will go well too and he'll really like the job - I'm hoping he'll call me with an update, but you know men just aren't as concerned about these things sometimes. And, he's going to try to meet up with his family this afternoon at his mom's doctor's appointment. She's been feeling sick for a few weeks now, so she's going to a gastrointestinal (no idea how to spell that) specialist of some sort. Hopefully they can figure out what's causing the problem and get her some treatment.

Other than that, I'm working on a zoning case at work, so I'm having a little trouble with motivation - they are just not very interesting cases. But, it is always important to the parties, so I always want to get it right and do the best I can to explain to them why we're deciding what we do. I also have a bunch of CT layouts to get done by the end of the month - I've finished a couple and have a few more in the works. I'm really excited to get back to a more normal schedule and to have some more time to create again. There's a lot of great stuff in the works at the Digichick with the CT call, Carrie Stephens has put out a couple of great new kits, and at Scrapartist some of us are working on a really cool new challenge, so there's a lot of fun, creative things going on for me right now too! All in all, life is good. Oh, and I've now lost about 8 pounds and I'm feeling a lot better with the healthier diet, so that's making me happy too :) Now if I can just get used to getting up bright and early again!

Two in a Row!

I know, it's shocking, two posts in a row LOL! But, I had to share this great opportunity with everybody - The Digichick is having another Creative Team call! These don't come around too often, so if you're interested in joining the Chick team, be sure to apply! We're really excited about adding some new members, with all the great talent out there right now I'm sure we'll find some wonderful additions! It's a great group of very talented scrappers, so I'd really encourage everyone to give it a shot :)

Good News

Some good news for today :) First, Bob got a new job! He'll be starting next week working for the University of Arizona as a groundskeeper. The U of A has an amazing collection of plants - it's actually an arboretum in fact - so it's a great opportunity to take care of some beautiful plant life. Plus, he'll be a state employee, so he'll get wonderful benefits, including not only health, but huge tuition discounts and even the ability to buy books and computer stuff from the campus bookstore. I'm really excited about that! I might take a few art or design classes or who knows what, plus a discount on software and computer equipment will be great! And, I think he'll really like working there - it's a great school and we always enjoy being on campus, so I think it will be a good environment to work in too.

Second, on the health front, I've lost about 6-7 pounds so far on the eating healthy/working out plan! I'm really happy with that - not only with the weight loss, but with the fact that I feel like this is something I can live with. One thing that's made that a lot easier was my purchase of Cuisinart's Griddler! If you haven't seen this thing yet, it's like a George Foreman grill, only the plates come out and it opens up all the way flat so you can cook more on it and you can use it as a griddle too (it comes with griddle and grill plates). I can cook chicken or fish on it in under ten minutes so it makes it really easy to come home from the gym and get dinner done. That's helped a lot with cutting down on eating out. I totally recommend one of these - it's worth every dime!

Finally, be sure to swing over to Scrapartist this week! The fabulous Kim Christensen joined us in the shoppe and there's some great challenges this week! We're featuring Michelle aka Mishou in the Scraplift Challenge, doing 4x6 layouts in the Outside the Box challenge and Robyn and Christine are getting inspiration from the amazing artwork of Teesha Moore in the Altered Art Challenge.

Feeling Healthy

Yeah, that's right, I'm feeling healthy! Not something I've felt for quite a while LOL, but over the last few weeks Bob and I have really been working at eating better and working out more. So, I've been going to the gym six days a week and I've almost completely given up junk food and candy! At first it was really tough, but it's gotten easier as the days have gone by. Don't get me wrong, I miss my Swedish Fish, but I feel so much better! Now if I can just stick with it :)

All of this started when I saw an Oprah talking about her bootcamp challenge - I was so inspired! But, working out eight times a week just isn't an option for me and I know that if I'm too hard on myself with food I can get crazy. The timing, however, was perfect. I had been thinking for a while about how I had become a person who ate mostly junk. We ate out alot at fast food places, we ate a lot of candy and snacks and just generally didn't eat well. I never used to be that kind of person - I have always thought of myself as a healthy person - I like healthy food and I shop at stores like Trader Joes and Wild Oats and I love Dr. Weil! But, my lifestyle was not living up to my own image of myself - over the last few years I've just gotten worse and worse. So, when I saw that Oprah, it all sort of came together. I decided that I would go back to being a healthy eater. It's definitely going to be a long process, but I'm feeling good so far. Hopefully I won't bore you all with my dietary changes, but I feel like I really want to reinforce my positive feelings about the changes and talking about them helps that along!

On an entirely different note, my little vacation was wonderful! We did some hiking and hung out with friends and just generally took it easy. Just what I needed! I got some scrapping done, but I also did a little designing. I created some botanical brushes from some of my hiking photos and made a new paper pack and I also updated an old freebie kit. You can get them both in the Scrapartist freebie section here and here. I hope you enjoy them!