The Bucket List

It seems to be an ongoing thing with bloggers that I have been reading of all the things they want to do before they or their "bucket list". I have had one for a while, since I was about 16 actually and I wanted to add more stuff to it because some of the blogger that I have been reading have some things on theirs that make me want to do more than just travel. I have obviously done some of the things on my list. So in no particular order, here they are.

1. Get married - Completed August 2002
2. Have children (at least 2) - half done - Completed January 2010
3. Get a Master's Degree - Completed July 2006
4. Go to England - Completed February 2004
5. Go to Ireland - Completed March 2005
6. Go to Germany - Completed July 2006
7. Go to Italy - Completed June 2005
8. Learn to snowboard
9. Sell some of my pottery and/or my art
10. Write a book
11. Become good at sewing Completed May 2013
12. Invent something and sell it
13. Learn to play the piano or at least one song
14. Finish scrapbooking old pictures (not sure this will ever get done)
15. Go sky diving
16. Go hang gliding
17. Kill a turkey
18. Go to Hawaii Completed May 2013
19. Beat Tim and Dad at racquet ball
20. Build my own personal library
21. Live in a nice house - Completed October 2005, March 2008, & June 2010
22. Build the forever house
23. Go scuba diving (not sure this will happen either with my ear issues)
24. Learn to refinish a piece of furniture
25. Take up photography - Completed April 2008
26. Learn to water ski
27. Go skiing in the snow
28. Get to 135 - 140 lbs. and stay there!
29. Swim with dolphins
30. Read the classics
31. Drive a NASCAR/do the NASCAR experience
32. Go bungee jumping and yell Geronimo as I go down
33. Go to Egypt
34. Read all the books that I own
35. Go on a hot air balloon ride
36. Go to France - Completed July 2006
37. Complete my family tree
38. Be part of a Flash Mob
39. Eat waffles in Belgium - Completed July 2006
40. Eat a crepe in Paris - Completed July 2006
41. Go to the top of the Empire State Building - Completed May 2007
42. Go to a Yankee Game - Completed May 2007 (Yankee v. Red Sox-Yankees WON!)
43. Run a 5K - Completed July 2012
44. Run a 10K Completed October 2014
45. Run a half marathon (13.1 miles)
46. Run a marathon (26.2 miles)
47. Take Max to Disney World
48. Get one of my layout published in a  scrapbooking magazine
49. Make cannolis  - Completed September 2012
50. Go see the Grand Canyon
51. Go to the Mall of America
52. Go to Mt. Rushmore
53. Do all the touristy things in Washington D.C.
54. Go see a show on Broadway
55. Find my dream job/career
56. Buy my first house  - Completed June 2010
57. Be debt free
58. See the Sistine Chapel in Rome - Completed June 2005
59. See the Colosseum in Rome - Completed June 2005
60. Take a cooking class
61. Perform a random act of kindness (i.e. pay for some one's meal, etc.) Completed September 2014
62. See the Statue of Liberty - Completed June 2000
63. Go white water rafting
64. Fly a plane
65. Go to Alaska
66. Ride a camel (preferably in Egypt)
67. Grow my own food/have a vegetable garden - Completed June 2012
68. Stand on the Great Wall of China
69. Captain a boat for a day
70. Be in a movie or TV show
71. Make a movie of Max's first year
72. Finish Max's baby book
73. Get all the DVDs into digital form  (Tim accomplished this) Completed May 2013
74. Walk over the Brooklyn Bridge
75. Walk over the Golden Gate Bridge
76. Go to Alcatraz 
77. Witness the Northern Lights
78. See a whale on a whale watch
79. Visit Pearl Harbor Completed May 2013
80. Get married in Vegas
81. Go to Vegas
82. Get a 3rd tattoo Completed May 2013
83. Ride a really long zip line
84. Break a world record
85. Drive through that big tree in CA
86. Vote (for a president)
87. Go to the equator 
88. Raise chickens and goats
89. Hear Max say "I love you" with clarity Completed March 2013
90. Take Max to Lego Land
91. Make all handmade gifts for Christmas one year
92. Go deep sea fishing
93. Make wine
94. Go to Niagara Falls
95. Go on a cruise
96. Visit the fish market in Seattle, Washington
97. Celebrate New Year's Eve in New York City
98. Go crowd surfing
99. Ride a gondola in Venice, Italy
100. Go the the Vatican (Rome) - Completed June 2005
101. Go snowmobiling
102. Ride in a helicopter
103. Go to a St. Patrick's Day celebration in Ireland - Completed March 2005
104. Go to LA
105. Go to the World Trade Center Memorial
106. Make pasta from scratch/homemade 
107. Catch a foul ball
108. Visit the Worlds Largest Stuff
1. Rocking Chair - Completed June 2012
109. Eat a meal backwards (1st dessert, 2nd entree, etc.) Completed November 2013
110. Do a triathlon 
111. Swim in Pacific Ocean Completed May 2013
112. Swim with sea turtles Completed May 2013
113. Visit all the NY sites that are made popular by TV
1. Seinfeld restaurant
2. Friends fountain in Central Park
114. Knit something
115. Donate to Locks of Love Completed June 2014
116. Compete in a Tough Mudder
117. Go to Disney World

I know there are more but well I think that is all for now, I'm sure there will be more things that will come up what I will want to do but for now I think 111 things is more than enough things to do. Do I think I will get all of them done...no, I don't. Do I plan on trying to get a good 90% of them done, yes I do. 

BETTER : My 2012 Word

My goal this year is to be BETTER. Better about everything.

A BETTER wife.
A BETTER mom.
A BETTER person about completing my list of things and following through on things.
BETTER at eating healthy and exercising.
A BETTER photographer.
A BETTER blogger.
A BETTER scrapbooker.
A BETTER person all around.

I didn't write a New Year's resolution because I never follow through with them so I thought the word BETTER would kind of be a blanket effect on all that I want to accomplish this year. There is one thing that I want to do here on the blog to make myself more accountable and that is my Project Life posts. I did do Project Life last year but kind of fell off the wagon in September/October time frame. I am going to complete that project this week but with that being said, I do not want to fall behind with this years Project Life. So if I said that I'm going to post the weekly layouts here it might make me more accountable in doing them. I still really love that project and want to play with some different ideas that I have recently seen on other people's blogs and/or scrapbooks. So I think Tuesdays or Wednesday will be PL day. I'm excited because I think I'm going to print more pictures at home this year as Tim got me a new printer for Christmas. A printer specifically for photos. YEAH for pictures.

Okay, so with that being said, I'm going to download my cards and print my pictures for this past week's PL.

Here's to the New Year and to being BETTER!!

Right Now

I should be showering and getting ready for bed but I'm here writing this blog post.

I'm tired from crazy Vicky at the YMCA Boot Camp class she gave tonight...but it does feel great to work out again.

I need a new pair of workout shoes.

I'm about a month behind in my Project Life album. I don't like this, trying to catch up.

My household has a case of the sniffles.

I have a pile of dirty dishes from last night that will probably sit there again tonight because I chose to do other things today.

I hope the grass seed works so my yard does not look like a blind person gave it a hair cut.

I'm thinking I really need to call and get my dress altered for my sister's wedding, it is only a few weeks away.

There is no Diet Coke in my house, both a good and a bad thing. I'm down to one a day (most days).
I need to figure out how to use my movie software so that I can make the video of all of all the video clips I took of Max his first year and start his second.

I'm a little worried about hurricane tornado season. Never had tornadoes before.

I'm going to bed.

My Finished Project Life 2010

I finally finished it. I'm so proud. I know I haven't updated about my Project Life in a while but I just finished 2010 and have already started on 2011. I'm still working on my Intro page for that album but wanted to share just a few of the beginning pages and the ending pages. This is a very picture heavy post so you have been warned. *smile*
The Intro page. My original Project Life album got broken we moved from England so I have everything put into a We R Memory 3-ring album. I love it, but still wish I had the Project Life album that is suppose to be with the whole kit. Oh well, this works and I'm happy.

The first page is a 12 x 12 of Max the day he was born. He was born on January 1st so what an awesome date to start Project Life right? The right side of the page is all about the day Max was born. There are pictures with my parents, Tim and I, and Max's birth announcement.

A closer look at the right side of the page. We were in England so my parents flew in that day.

Skip ahead to October. There were so many pages that I just loved I just randomly opened the book and this is the page that I got.

Just wanted to show a close up that it was 60 degrees out in November. I thought it was a cool idea. Probably going to do it again randomly this year.

More pictures of Max. One of my favorites is the one in the upper right hand corner. It's his way of "kissing"/happy. I was taking pictures of him as he was coming towards me. Love it!

These are of Max's birthday. I did this project from his birthday to birthday and will do the same this year. In face in my 2011 book the first page is a 12 x 12 on Max's birthday eating his cake.

Here's the last page in the book. Max had a tuxedo oneie when he was born so we have decided to do that same thing each year. The outfit is from our neighbors in England, Drew, Shelley, and Lily.

And finally I wanted to write a little blurb about the whole Project Life for this year and how proud I was of myself for doing it. When we have our next child (whenever that is) I plan to do the same for them, do Project Life from birthday to birthday.

So now I've updated, I have a few other things that I'm working on, will try and post soon enough.

I've been a bad blogger...sorry

Once again I have been a bad blogger, going another 2 months (almost) before I posted a real post. I mean I wanted to but just never got around to it. I have busy doing many things which of course I'm behind on those too. I'm currently trying to catch up on all that stuff, mainly my Project Life from last year and getting this year's started. But before we get there, a few pic and an update.

Below is a pic of what Tim did to Max one night after he was pretty much done eating. See the things that happen when I'm not around, I love it! It makes for such great stories later. Which is my word this year, Story. I'm all about trying to tell our stories and the ones that have been placed on the back burner. I know these are not easy tasks but I feel that I need to tell them so that I can remember and so that Max can read about them later on.

My best friend Lisa got married in New Hampshire on January 16th, 2011. I was the maid of honor and this was only the 2nd time that three of us (me, Lisa, and Cheryl = my old roommate/best friend from college) have gotten together since my wedding. It was a great day and damn cold with lots of snow. Tim kept saying who comes to New Hampshire in January without ski equipment (*smile*). We all had a good time and agreed that we need together once a year for a long weekend to catch up. This will probably be easier now that we are home in the states.

Pic from the rehearsal dinner. I had to bust out the Chowan sweatshirt. It didn't say Chowan College but it will work. Tim got this for me as Christmas present along with a Chowan University onsie for Max. We match, I know it's gay but again, I love it!

Max got to see his first snow fall in NH as well. My mom's bf, Manny, bought him this awesome snowsuit equipped with booties and mittens (not the idiot kind that are attached to a string *smile*). We would stand him up in the snow and he would just fall to all fours. It was funny. He kept waving his hand back and forth. I really wanted to make a snowman but every where we went (NH, NY, RI) the snow was just powder. Of course the day we come back to OK my Mamma calls me and says the snow is perfect now for making a snowman. Go figure. Next time I suppose.

After the wedding we went to see Tim's family in Albany, NY. Outside of Tim's parents no one had met Max before this picture was taken. A "open house" was held so we didn't have to drive to see everyone. This is most of the family. We are still missing a few people here and there but all in all a picture to document that everyone was here had to be taken. It actually came out pretty well, I think. We got most of the kids to look at the camera at the same time. I think the blinking light on the camera helped.

Max also had his first birthday on January 1st. We made him an Elmo cake. We didn't do a party or anything as we only moved here about 6 months ago and don't have very many friends, that and it is New Year's Day. So we stayed home and just a quiet little thing just the 3 of us. My Mom (Nana to Max) gave him a bunch of clothes and more toys so we didn't feel that he needed any more so we didn't get him anything. He also got money from distant relative and friends. Thanks to all for the gifts. I think I remembered thank you cards. I'll feel really bad if I didn't. *blush*

Sorry this is going in no particular order, the pictures were being a pain so this is how they came up and I'm going with it. Also while on our trip to Lisa wedding NH, then after our visit to Tim's parents in NY, we headed to Rhode Island to see the rest of my family, those that were there anyways. We stayed the weekend, my father flew up to see the 3 of us. We went duck bowling. Basically you are bowling with smaller sized balls, like cannon balls. Mamma always seems to win when we play. Tim tries to hook it like a big ball and it doesn't work well. I think he was last in both games that we played. Here is the group picture of those that came to dinner the day before we left. It was nice to see everyone but is was also nice to be going home too. I missed my bed, my house, my dogs and my routine. But if you never leave your house you'll never know what you really love about it.

Other updates is that my sister has now set a date for her wedding. She had to wait until Josh, her fiance, got into his new unit to see if he was even going to be around for it. They are getting married on June 18th, 2011 in Fayetteville, NC. They are still deciding if they are going to do a church wedding or just get married where the reception is going to take place. Bri has already told me that they are not doing a Catholic mass, so if they do do a church wedding it will be the 20-30 minute deal. She is doing red and white for her colors. She already has her dress and I just ordered her Save the Date cards which I will be addressing and mailing out for her. Bri isn't much into planning her wedding. It stresses her out so she is letting everyone else, for the most part, plan/be involved in doing the wedding.

I know there are other things but well I will be here all day writing if I tell you everything. I'm going to go and try to finish Project Life 2010 and catch up on Project life 2011. I have decided to do this years by week. Let's see how this turns out. Will post pictures when I get farther along and will take pictures of last years so you can see the finished version. Until then...

Project Life: Mine and a Review

I'm not really sure where I heard about this project first, but I knew as soon as I saw it I wanted to do it. It is called Project Life. I talked about it a little here and I'm so proud that I have kept up with it since the first of the year.

I was originally going to do it just for us (Tim and I) but as the time got close to the birth of Max I thought it would a cool idea to document his first year. In the beginning it was all about him, but as I read what other people were doing with theirs I thought I would change it up a little and make it more about what happened his first year.

This first page (below) is on Max's birthday which happened to fall on New Year's Day, January 1st, 2010. I love the feeling of a fresh start. The kit comes with everything and this first page isn't how I think it was designed to be, but I made it work for what I wanted and there was to much going on to just put one picture and write a small baseball card story about this. I mean it was the birth of my first child, right?!
This is more how it is suppose to look. One card and one picture for each day to make a total of a week, but I know your are saying, well there are 8 picture spots and 8 card slots and there are only 7 days in a week. If you look in the bottom right corner you will see a blueish-green piece of paper. On this piece you are suppose to stamp the dates there (stamp also included in kit) and the extra baseball card slot is suppose to be another card that is similar to the "date card". I only did this a few times. I took a lot of my cues from how Ali is doing her Project Life. Which I totally love! But I thought about using the extra baseball card slots for extra pictures. I thought it was a waste of space to put some random looking card in there. If I didn't have a picture to put there, I just put a piece of mail, a receipt, or something else that was relevant to Max like a tag that came off a new outfit he got.

I also had some extra page protectors that I wanted to use for other items that were bigger than a 4 x 6 photo and that I didn't want to fold up in the baseball card slots. Below you will see it was a card made for Max by Max's Godmother's son, Hayden. I wanted to keep that so I put it in a 8.5 x 11 page protector.

I also wasn't afraid to put the vertical pictures in there too. Just because the picture was vertical I wasn't not going to put it in there because it didn't go with how the book was laid out. The one thing that I did do was to make sure that all the vertical pictures are going in the same direction throughout the book.

Also in the kit you will find these tabbed 4 x 6 cards. Recently I learned that if you fold them in half they will fit in the smaller slots, not sure why I just figured that out but I did. But I use these to tell a longer story. The one you see below in the bottom right corner is about Max's first 4th of July. The funny part about that is I don't have a picture from that day. So I used the story to go where the picture would go. The other thing that I have learned doing this project is that if I don't take a picture that day then it's okay. I was really up tight about not having a picture for every day of his life but I got over that quickly as I realized that there are other things that are more important.

So what do you do if you have a whole lot of pictures from one day that you want to put in your Project life book. Well there are two things you can do 1.) You can make a 12 x 12 layout and put it in there. The kit comes with 12 x 12 paper, for what I assume, to do just this or you can do 2.) Put a 12 x 12 page protector in there with six 4 x 6 picture slots.

My mother recently came for a visit and there were so many pictures that I or she took that I couldn't pick just one so this is how I solved it. I numbered all the pictures on the page, then I took one of the 4 x 6 journaling cards and wrote my journaling for each picture next to the corresponding number. Simple, effective, and it still fits in with the idea of the whole project.

So that's it. I just wanted to share what I was doing and what I thought about Project Life. I think this is an awesome idea to do for the first year of anything (child, wedding, year before retirement). I plan to do this for our next child whenever we we get there. It will start the day they are born and go to their first birthday. It can be time consuming but when you look back you will be so proud. I know I am. I will keep you updated on how it is going. Remember there is no wrong way to record your memories.