Christmas & Brayden Update!

Christmas was a fun but exhausting day - we started off opening presents at home (got an ottoman for my chair, and lots of other goodies), then off to BIL's for Christmas lunch and time with Rob's family, then 90-minute drive to my parents' house for Christmas with them, my sister, niece, and nephew.
Brayden is doing so good, he's a chubby little guy! He smiles and laughs a lot. He's teething so he just chewed away on my hand. I guess it tasted yucky, because he'd chew, then make a funny face, then chew, then giggle lol. Lexi had a great day, and was thrilled to receive her Fur Real Parrot from her mommy. Here's both kids with my sister (their mom), then a pic of just Brayden:

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas!

Jenn

I Scrapped!

I finally did some scrapbooking! I did 7 pages between last night and today. Here are 6 of them:

First time my niece Lexi met her new baby brother, Brayden, when he came home from the hospital at 3 weeks old.

Brayden's pouty face (4 months old).

First time I held Brayden - he was still in the hospital and two weeks old.

Thanksgiving 2006.

Thanksgiving 2007 at our house.

Thanks for looking! :)
Jenn

House paint!

We got our house painted last week and are very happy with the new color and the quality of the work. We used Dynamic Painting (http://www.dynamicpaintingusa.com/). One of their painters came out one morning to pressure wash the whole house, driveway, and walkway, the next day he was here filling cracks, then over two days painted the whole house. Here are some pics.
This one doesn't show the color real well, but you can see how nice it looks!

This is our front door. I'm getting used to the color, it seems to have looked nicer on the paint chip lol. It's a color I like, just not sure I like it with the house color.

This is the back of the house. You can get a better idea of the color in this picture.


If you need your house painted and want to see ours in person, feel free to stop by! And I don't know if they give anything for references, but mention Rob's name (ROB RYAN) just in case lol :)
Jenn

A bit cheesy, but I love my new ring!

WARNING - YOU MAY BECOME NAUSEATED AFTER READING THIS POST!

I got this ring kind of as an anniversary gift from Rob, except I bought it myself because I'm the one with the Kohl's CC.

Our wedding colors were navy (sapphires), silver (white gold), and white (diamonds). Plus I liked the infinity style of the ring - together forever (HURL). It was just perfect to celebrate 10 years together!
Jenn

Our anniversary/touristy weekend

As of Thursday (Thanksgiving), Rob and I have been married 10 years! We didn't get to take a trip or anything, but we did spend the last couple days together being tourists. Friday we went to MOSI after leftovers for lunch, and really enjoyed the Shipwreck exhibit. Here are a couple pics. The big globe below with the red dots shows all the shipwrecks that have been found through 1983. The next pic was on the ceiling; I'm not sure what it is but it was found in a shipwreck. The gold pic is a bunch of gold coins found in a shipwreck.






We walked around the rest of the museum, the butterfly garden, and then watched Polar Express on the IMAX screen. That was a cute movie; we hadn't seen it before. Weird on such a round, giant screen! After MOSI we had a nice dinner at Olive Garden, using gift cards we got as anniversary gifts.



Saturday Rob took me to K2 Scrapbooking to pick up my prize for finding their cool ad in the January CK mag, then we had lunch at Sarasota Brewing Co (doesn't hold a candle to TBBC!), and spent the afternoon at Marie Selby Botanical Gardens. The Gardens were so pretty, we both enjoyed looking at the flowers and unique plants. The day was gorgeous, so we loved being outside too. Except when I commented how the bit of humidity in the air made my hair go nuts - and Rob agreed then said "and look at all that gray! I thought you dyed your hair when you got it cut?". How RUDE lol! I informed him that highlights were expensive so they only happened every few cuts lol. We bought a few plants to kill (we have seriously black thumbs in our house lol), then had dinner at Red Lobster using those gift cards - two free dinners in a row! I'll end by sharing some pics of the Gardens.

My Baby Nephew's Getting Bigger!

Rob and I hosted Thanksgiving at our house for my family, after a yummy meal at his brother's house with his family. Baby Brayden (now 4 months old) didn't eat turkey of course, but he was quite the little ham! The first pic is of his hair growing in - he looks like an old bald guy!
The next pic is the best I could catch of him and his pouty face. He's just adorable - already knows how to get his way!
For those who don't know, Brayden was born 10 weeks early but is now a happy, healthy, 12-lb. little boy! Isn't he just adorable?!?
Jenn

Scrapbooking Shop Hop

I had a wonderful day today - I took off down I-75South around 9:30 to hit as many scrapbook stores as I could for the Gulf Coast Holiday Shop Hop http://www.gulfcoastholidayshophop.com/. The weather was perfect, my iPod was cranked, and a glass of sweet tea was beside me. I made it to six stores, getting 20% off at each for my purchase of a $15 totebag/passport. I loved My Scrapbook Shoppe and Scrapbooking And Beyond and plan to visit again :)

They all had make-and-takes - here's the one from Scrappin' Sisters - it's a 4-page pop-up mini book. So cute!

Trans-Siberian Orchestra

I have seen TSO several times in concert - and never get tired of their music or the elaborate light shows they put on. I went with my friend Lisa and my parents (we unfortunately didn't get to sit with them though), and Lisa and I had awesome seats. I took several pics before the ushers started getting all worked up over people using cameras - they never said no photos, so of course I took some! Wish I had been able to get more, but oh well, some is better than none. :) Anyway, the show was fabulous and lasted for THREE HOURS! The lighting was really cool, and included lasers and pyrotechnics. Here's a pic - if you ever get the opportunity to go see them, I highly recommend it!
Jenn

Happy Hallow... Wacky Tacky Day

Happy Halloween to everyone! I didn't really celebrate, but did wear an orange top and Halloween jewelry to work. Oh yeah, and ate a couple mini candy bars lol.

I also got to experience Rob's annual ritual of picking out an entire outfit that doesn't match for Riverview High School's "Wacky Tacky Day". It's part of homecoming week tradition, and Rob really gets into it. He raids my closet for accessories (the purple scarf/belt was a birthday gift last year from my dear friend Charlotte, and the gold hoop earring and FSU scrunchie/bracelet are mine as well) and digs deep into his own for whatever he might find. He does this the night before so he's ready to dress in the morning. Here's this year's getup:

Before he got all dressed up, we spent some time in my scraproom (you can see the purple walls behind him) chatting and playing with the dogs. We were amazed at the amount of dog hair that was on the floor when we were done! The vacuum got a good workout this evening lol.

Hope everyone had a great day!
Jenn

Organ Donation

My posts so far have been light-hearted, but now I have a serious topic - organ donation. If you haven't signed up to be an organ donor, please do - and make your wishes known to your family. It's something many people don't think about, and too many people on transplant lists die waiting. One person's organs can save 8 lives.

This plea comes about from a new friend's experience. Her darling little girl, Savannah, has a rare liver disease and has been on the transplant list for a new liver for 6 months. Please watch this video montage of her story and talk to your family today.
http://www.onetruemedia.com/shared?p=405f2f547cfd82d9b619e3&skin_id=601&utm_source=otm&utm_medium=email

Thanks for reading,
Jenn

Beer!

Rob and I enjoy tasting new beers, just like many people who enjoy tasting new wines.

We spent this past weekend in Orlando at the Sunshine Challenge http://www.cfhb.org/sunshine/index.html, a beer convention and competition for hand-crafted beers. He didn't enter anything, but plans to next year. We participated in most of the events, including dinner/beer tastings Friday night, pub crawl (took a bus to three different pubs, along with raffles and a keg on the bus itself), and Saturday night dinner. We had a great time talking to everyone, and felt welcome although many knew each other and we didn't know anyone.

Oh, we checked in before dinner and got name badges with our pic and our "title" for the weekend - Rob named me "Beer Bitch" and he was "Hop Head". It was a great idea, because everyone wanted to know everyone else's titles so it encouraged conversation.

Here's a pic of the beer truck and the Friday beer tasting - notice there's not too many people there, so it was really nice!

This morning thing sucks!

I've survived week one of my new job. I like it so far, and have been already been assigned a few things with more to come. But wow, does it suck getting up before it's light out, and seeing the sun rise while I drive to work! Many of you know I am soooo not a morning person - this just proves it! Thank God for sweet tea :)
Jenn

Fresh Start

I start a new job tomorrow - I'm excited because it's my first new job in over 9 years and everyone I've met so far is really nice. Of course I have no complaints with having 6 weeks off in between! Wish me luck :)

They fixed our pane!

I called The Glass Doctor this morning and they came out this afternoon and put in a brand-new piece of glass! Yay! When I called the guy actually answered the phone saying "We fix your panes", which I think is hilarious :)

Have a great weekend!
Jenn

How on Earth did that happen?!?

We just spent a fun evening cleaning up glass. Yes, glass. LOTS of glass. Rob was sitting in the living and yelled to me to see where I was - I was in my scrap room (of course), and he mumbled something about "that's weird". Upon investigation, our back sliding glass door had popped and was crackling into thousands of little bits.
We decided it was best to knock the rest of the glass out, so with plywood to protect the house (and himself), Rob pushed the rest out. We then spent a good 45 minutes sweeping it up with a dustpan and broom. The joys of home ownership!

Hope your evening was better than ours!
Jenn

Daughtry!

I went to see Daughtry http://myspace.com/daughtry in concert last night with dh and some friends. What a great show! I even enjoyed the opening act, The Sunstreak myspace.com/thesunstreak (well, they are actually better on CD than live, but I'm glad I bought their CD!) Anyhow, I got some awesome pics and some video too! Here are a couple:
Drummer Joey Barnes and Chris Daughtry.
The stage was simple and very cool. I love their logo, ended up buying an over-priced t-shirt with it lol.
And here's one of me and dh before the show. We hardly ever get pics of us together, and this one turned out nice I think :)
Off to look at the rest of my pics now :)
Jenn

Looks like I figured it out!

I officially have a blog now, I've joined the 21st century!
So now that you're here, I'll share a couple things I made yesterday. The first is a perpetual calendar that I got in the crafts section at Wal-Mart and decorated using Scrap 'Til Dawn's Homemade Midnight Kit along with Gin-X Express-Ons rubons.


The next one is kind of goofy, but it means a lot to me. I recently quit my job after 9 years, and when I e-mailed all the people I worked with to tell them I got back some really nice notes. So I scrapped them all in a mini book using Imaginisce's Exotic East paper and embellishments (thanks Donna!). Although the flowers were part of the line, they didn't come close to matching - so I inked them.

I made something else but it's a gift so I can't post it here :)

This is just a test - I really have no idea what the heck I'm doing, just thought it might be easier to have one spot to share my scrapping and paper-crafting creations rather than posting them all over the place. Not sure how often I'll update because I'm not sure how often I'll create something lol. :)