Just Make Stuff

Buy...

One of the many, many organizational projects involved in the great closet clean-out of 2016 was going through the three boxes where I stuffed everything Mac has made over the years. In addition to school projects, he has made so many cards and crafted up lots of wrapping paper designs (he still does) and I have saved them all.

Now I have just kept my favorites (which is about 3/4 of everything I tucked away since he started preschool sixteen years ago) and cannot wait to reorganize them into themes from over the years.

My favorite finds were the card he made before leaving on a trip with his dad. He decorated the front with the word "bye" except he spelled it "buy". I also loved the "Welcome to Back to School Night" letter he wrote one year that said his favorite subject was art and that he did not like math or science or any of the other subjects. He spoke the truth when he said that, so thankfully he decided to work hard in school despite only liking one subject.

The closet before...

I finish school this week and was not offered a summer school course like last year. Sean's school year shifted three weeks earlier, which means he is officially on summer break. Sadly, since he loves it so much, he did not get a summer school position in his district which means he will be home. 

So last summer we had a total of five days off together (while Mac was recovering from wisdom teeth surgery) and this summer we have about seventy. 

You know what that means...house projects!

The first project is a whole house clean-out. This weekend we started tackling the closet in the guest bedroom. For years it has kind of felt like Monica Geller's secret messy closet, so I cannot wait for it to be perfectly organized.

Graduation announcements...

Seventy-five graduation announcements were mailed to our family and friends last week. At the beginning of the month Mac and I went to scout out a possible place to take photos. What was intended to be a practice run actually ended up being the super-duper official senior announcement "portraits". I put together the front and had a stack of 5x7's printed, they were then adhered to printed card stock. 

Sean and I went back and forth on whether or not to share the little high school summary. Ultimately I sent a text to a group of friends I knew would be brutally honest with me, "Is it okay to list some of his high school accomplishments? Does it read like 'That's pretty cool...way to go Mac' or does it make you think 'get over yourselves Griffin family...pompous asses' " They all voted go for it and I am happy we did. Bragging or not, Mac has done an amazing job in high school and we are so lucky to get to celebrate him.

And did you see that we have more cheerleading in our future? Mac tried out and made the team a couple of weeks ago. We are super happy that will we be at college football games in the fall. 

The announcements went out in metallic envelopes and everyone who lives around us had party invites tucked in there too. 

Cannot believe he graduates three weeks from today. 

Well Wishes...

Well Wishes...a homemade card shared on Wednesdays.

Project Life 2016: 02

The next batch of Project Life pages arrived in my mail box today. So far this year thirty six pages of memories have been saved with many more to go.

Senior Prom...

Mac went to prom this past weekend with the same group of friends he went with last year. And, just like last year, I made some decorations. This time the dinner was hosted at someone's house (and the prom theme was Midnight at the Oasis) so there was lots and lots of teal, purple and magenta patterns sewn into table runners and a banner to hang up. Then there were spray painted jars stuffed with flowers. I had a little too much fun with all of this.

Thankfully Mac had lots of fun too.

We have everything (ten feet of a two-sided banner, two seven-foot table runners, one three-foot runner and one smaller one-sided banner) that we won't need again and would love to see someone be able to use. So if you would like some (or all) of it, please leave a comment and I will email you to find out where to send it. 

Five favorite fonts...

Working on Mac's graduation announcements meant much font analysis took place. Here are some recent favorites. 

one.two.three.four.five

And here are more favorite fonts.

Well Wishes...

Well Wishes...a homemade card shared on Wednesdays.

Planner Supply Organizing...

This was the way I had my planner supplies "organized". I used each zipper pouch to group together similar items like stamps or sticky notes. And then everything else was tossed in there. 

So I bought a big storage box and divided trays. Now all cute planner items are truly organized. Stamps are not in here, I have another box for them and an organizational idea I have not made happen yet, but everything else is and it makes the box super fun to dig into. Now if only life could be a little less busy, so I could spend more time planning it.

Part of this whole reorganization project was gathering a few bunches of supplies to share since I could never use it all. I have three pouches filled with various items to send to three people. If you would like one leave a "pick me" comment by Wednesday evening. Please make sure the email address linked to your comment is current since I will email three people for their addresses. 

Week in the Life: Friday, Saturday & Sunday

Friday was my last day at the state college. We have a Monday/Wednesday 9:30am course, which has the super unlucky Friday at 8am time slot for our final. Silver lining is the usually stuffed parking lots are empty. My final exam is pretty simple, so by about 8:50am I was on my way out of of one of the best classrooms I've ever had at the school...perfect for all the group work we do. When I got to my office I thought it was funny my office mate had accidentally left the "I'm here" sign we have up all week when no one was there. May 13th is my mom's birthday (she was born on a Friday the 13th), so we went out to lunch at one of our favorite places. I had been looking forward to that Chicago hot dog and fries with cheese sauce all week. We ordered a piece of chocolate cake and I proudly had matches and birthday candles in my purse like my mom always brings if we are eating out for our birthday. The letter board is being used for our countdown to summer. We spent Friday night at Joann's picking out fabric for the decorations for Mac's friends prom dinner next week. And using the PicTapGo app at the end of the night this week editing my photos for this.

Mac took the initiative to start some more strength training. For some reason he was willing to do it in our front yard and he told me pretty much everyone of our neighbor's drove by, but he was embarrassed when I went to snap a photo while he was taking a break. My weekend breakfast...half a piece of extra sourdough toast (with too much whipped butter) three pieces of bacon and iced coffee. I decided my stack of 6x6 patterned papers needed to be cleaned out and reorganized into rainbow order. I had a dozen things that needed to be done right away, yet I took 45 minutes to listen to a podcast and do this...and felt much, much better. Sean grabbed strawberries at the farm stand. The flower pots on our front porch right now. They are the leftovers from my mom's gift. While Sean is grocery shopping there are at least three phone calls and/or texts double checking about something...this time it was shrimp. Wrote and mailed my birthday thank you notes. And speaking of notes, we went to Paper Source for the envelopes for Mac's graduation announcements. All these cute colors and he wanted black. Which they didn't have (would have never guessed it would have been that popular) so we both happily agreed to go with metallic gold.

Sunday I can sleep in. I was wide awake at 6am. So I quietly worked on graduation announcement address labels. The fabric from Friday night was being cut and sewn into a banner. After breakfast Sean and I headed to the local garden store with a 20% to get a dwarf avocado tree. He was laughing at me as I gently rubbed it's leaves and whispered, "Guacamole" over and over to it. Then I got a few more things since we had a coupon and all. My favorite little gift shop was closing it's doors today so we had to stop by. At home I was texting photos with a friend discussing changing-out the door to our coat closet as I dream of turning it into a pantry. The late afternoon was spent cooking a ton of stuff for the week, including dill dip to take to a teacher appreciation event at Mac's high school. One of the other things we cooked was dinner. I made Sean stop eating so I get a photo of his plate before I forgot. We made marinated top sirloin, roasted broccoli with freshly grated parmesan cheese and hasselback potatoes which looked cool, but we all decided we like baked potatoes better. 

This project certainly takes some extra time, but it is so, so cool to look back at a bunch of details and how they have changed over the last six years. Cannot wait for the next installment. 

Week in the Life: Thursday

Skimming lots of magazines on my iPad while getting a pedicure is my mini vacation every three weeks or so. I keep various necessities in my car's center console...a notebook and pens, hand lotion, kleenex, a glass cleaning cloth and a lint roller...today I was reaching for the lint roller for my black t-shirt. Waiting for an estimate on our car since we were rear ended on our trip...it meant that I got to see the Price is Right showcase showdown for the first time in about a decade. Sean sent me photos today, the first one was him on the roof of the junior high gym tossing eggs for a science class. I stopped to grab a sandwich on my way home from the car place. Sean sat at his desk with his super cool lunchbox and CNN...which is why I often hear, "I saw on CNN...". One of my high school intro classes had a test today and snapped a picture of the sixty year old flooring (thankfully you can't see how dirty it is). And that photo means you now know that I will often wear the same thing to different classes during the week, since this the same skirt I had on Monday. The trick is to remember what I wore to what so I don't end up wearing the same thing to the same class. Sean and I ended up waiting for photos at Costco tonight since the super nice person in the photo center was helping me get Mac's grad announcements printed correctly. That meant a little wandering that we hadn't planned on. I snapped this photo of Sean picking out a watermelon before he could smile. Thankfully I also snapped it before he started acting like he was making out with the watermelon thinking I would want to document that.

Week in the Life: Wednesday

I worked on some Project Life this morning since my I need to clear out the photos (a ton from our trip) since I keep getting messages that my iCloud is full. Taking Paddington out to the sideyard...you can barely see him in the corner of the rocks. String cheese and wheat thins have been one of my favorite snacks lately. Ran to Costco to grab the test photos for Mac's grad announcements and grabbed a salad for dinner with lots of goat cheese to add to it. Was a little overly dramatic via text when Mac approved the announcements. It was a happy day for Sean, the three pairs of running shoes he ordered arrived...those two different bright ones could burn your eyes out. Sean didn't shave on our little vacation and it has turned into a mini beard that is getting shaved off tonight..."But wait! Let me get a photo of it!". A friend asked me to craft up a cake topper for a bundt cake she ordered for a party for one of her kids this weekend. We used one of our bundt pans as a guide and Sean was my third and fourth hands to get it made.

Week in the Life: Tuesday

I did not start taking photos until I was making myself half of a baked potato for an early lunch...this is my favorite way to cook them. The tulips Sean bought me this weekend were so pretty and are completely falling apart. I worked on Mac's graduation announcements and then worked on them some more...this was far from the final draft. I restocked the notepads downstairs since we managed to finish two of them yesterday...good thing I have collected way too many. I came home from work starving and there were 72 freshly baked cookies Sean made to drop off for teacher appreciation at Mac's school...then there were 71 cookies. I refiled all the items from today's class lecture and activity...we finished up a unit on marriage and divorce where the students were marriage experts that had to diagnose the perceived health of various celebrity marriages. As we discuss in class, even if every bit of available information about the relationship are all lies, there are still real consequences for our perceptions of marriage. After dropping off the cookies to the mom collecting everything for teacher appreciation we went to pick up Mac from work. He started another job through the school workability program...you can't see, but he is right inside the front window fixing the rows of carts while his mom was a creeper in the parking lot. Then we ended the night with more graduation announcement drafts. 

Week in the Life: Monday

Started this morning with a big mug of lemon water. I usually am teaching Monday mornings, but my state college finishes up with a final later this week, so I climbed into bed with my laptop to grade my online class. When my class was graded I went downstairs to wash dishes and clean up the kitchen. The mail usually come early here (since we live down the street from the post office) and is pretty much always sorted and handled within minutes of coming in the house. I worked on cheer team tasks (starting to organize everything to hand over to the new president), exercised a bit, took a shower, ran a couple quick errands and came home to grab a late lunch and head to my afternoon class. Today's outfit was blue and pink. The high school classroom I am in for our after-school class is a little messy, but the walls are filled with ideas and enthusiasm, so I love being in there. I ordered a new kind of brush for my Clarisonic after learning about it during the facial I had on my birthday last week. Prom is in less than two weeks and I need to figure out some centerpieces and decorations for these year's theme.

It's a tradition now...

For three years now (2015 & 2014) Sean and I have filled flower pots for my mom's front porch. It's a total "surprise" at this point when the pots go missing Mother's Day weekend and end up back on her porch by Sunday morning. It's become one of my favorite spring traditions. 

Speaking of traditions, I am going to participate in Week in a Life for the sixth year in a row this week. Here's 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2015.

National Scrapbook Day...

Twenty years ago this week my mom got me started on scrapbooking. It may look a little different nowadays, but I love documenting as much as ever.

We have a bunch to do this weekend, but I am really going to try to crank out a mini album of our trip last week. I started on it tonight and will work on it tomorrow and Sunday.

So happy to have pictures and paper spread out all over.

Griffin Grove...

We were going to go to new York since I love it so much...we had a crazy idea about trying to make it to Iceland...we talked about Maine...Nashville...Austin...Sedona.

We finally decided that we would check off the redwood trees from our bucket-list. We headed out Thursday night and stayed in Bakersfield to get a head start and avoid morning traffic through LA. Friday we drove and drove and drove some more. We got rear-ended by a gracious eighty-year-old gentleman as we endured Bay Area traffic. We finally made it to the hotel just before dark. As we waited for our dinner reservations in the hotel dining room we walked down to the creek for Sean to show off his rock skipping skills. We had a cheese plate, a steak, pasta carbonara and a turtle cheesecake...it was one of the best meals we've ever had.

In the morning we packed up, hopped in the car and headed towards Redwoods State Park. It was almost empty and an indescribable dream come true. Getting out of the car into the crisp morning air to see the first towering tree that caught my eye was one of the best moments I have ever had...

We wandered through...not even getting to the touristy stuff, rather we just pulled over a few times to explore...or stand right in the middle of the road. 

As we turned around to start to drive out of the park, I caught a glimpse of a sign out of the corner of my eye exclaiming..."That said Griffin!". It was in a spot that was a little tricky to get to, but what are the chances? 

We have been lucky enough to travel to some places we have dreamed off...but this might have been the very best.

Well Wishes...

Well Wishes...a homemade card shared on Wednesdays.