This Sunday we have to go to a birthday party which means I don’t have to cook dinner! Hooray! It is birthday party pizza for us!
My Once A Month Meals are going great and this weekend I plan on making some more for the freezer. However this week I feel like I have an issue because I don’t like to have the same type of meat two nights in a row. I have a freezer chicken and a freezer pork planned as well as a pork roast….So Wed was hard to determine.
The meal I figured for last night (Sun) got discarded and I made tortellini with meat sauce, so I didn’t want to make spaghetti, or another Italian dish….and I don’t really want to make tortellini again, but it is what I came up with. Maybe I will change my mind in the next couple days though….maybe I will make Korean Beef for us and something else for the kids…
This year my running club and I will be participating in the Hood to Coast Relay Race as a fundraising team. We will be raising money for Providence Cancer Center to help #FINISHCANCER. Click on the picture below (or here) to donate today.
Need something to help plan your meals? I use the Plan to Eat online meal planner. Try it free for 30 days
I actually got our fist batch of Christmas cards out this week. When I order cards, I just order extra, but when I make them I always make less at first. I don’t want extra hand-made Christmas cars lying around, because they have the kids pictures on them, I can’t use them for next year.
My sister had always sent out Christmas cards with a picture of her kids. For Ian’s first Christmas we decided that we would have one picture done with all three kids. That way we can send one card to all our joint family and friends. Almost every years since (except last year, because I didn’t do cards last year) we have sent out a joint card. Typically I just order them, but not this year.
This year I decided to go back to making my own cards, because I can just use my Silhouette Cameo. It will be easy peasy. Unless you are like me and decide you need to make a Christmas card with like a hundred pieces. Needless to say they took a little longer than I thought they would.
We went to a local mall where a few times a day they release bubble snow in the atrium. I took a picture of the kids in the falling snow and thought it would be a great idea to make a shaker card like a snow globe. I used this snow globe file from Bird’s Cards, which is a great resource for free card files.
Back to the pictures, I didn’t like the mall and all the strangers in my background so I went a head and used Photoshop to ‘fix’ it.
Doesn’t that snowy tree scene look so much better? (Which was a free desktop background file)
While the three older kids did a great job taking a group picture, Sid didn’t cooperate all that much. I had many wonderful pictures with the other three, but no Sid.
For the picture of the boys I used this picture in front of the silver tree they had up. There wasn’t a good picture of those two with the snow.
So, you wanna see how the card turned out?
I hope everyone has a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
p.s. family and friends, there is another batch going out, so don’t worry if you haven’t gotten yours yet.
I know that in the world of blogging numbers are important.
You want stats to be high. You want clicks to be high. You want strangers to follow you.
Especially if you are blogging to make an income (however small) those things matter. You want the number of people who follow you to be high, because it shows that people want to see what you have to say. It shows the companies, where your potential income might come from, that you will be able to get their product information out there.
I still feel great every time I get a new follower, and it makes me a little sad when I lose one.
Every once in a while I will get a notification from Instagram that I have a new follower. Every time I click on that person’s profile.
Yesterday this is what I saw:
I blocked this user from my account
Now, maybe I am judging. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe I’m just turning into a ‘old lady’. But nothing about that profile seems legit to me. I didn’t click on the link, I was afraid to. To me this looks like an ad for porn. I don’t know if that profile is real, but I don’t want to know. Pictures like that don’t belong in my life.
I put up pictures of my crafts, my life and my family. I am OK with normal people following me and seeing those pictures, even if they are strangers. I am not OK with profiles like that having access to my pictures.
So I blocked it.
I blocked it by clicking on the square with an arrow in the top right corner. It gives me the option to block user, or report inappropriate.
This is not the first time I have blocked a profile like that. Once I had to report an ‘inappropriate’ profile so it could be removed. This also won’t be the last time I block one. But it reminds me again how scary the internet can be. It takes time to go through all the profiles that might like my pictures, or follow me, but I do it. And so should you. I know it brings my numbers down, but it is worth it.
Sorry, another running post, when I know you were looking for something crafty.
I haven’t had time for new crafts, but I keep trying to run. Because you can all see the countdown on the side bar. My big race is coming soon!
My cousin and I made a big leap on Saturday morning. We ran 10 miles.
Yep I said. 10 miles.
OK. I didn’t really run all ten miles, but I completed 10 miles. And that’s just as good.
Here’s how it went:
D wanted to run on Sat morning with another of her running friends A (who brought H with her). D wanted to meet at 6, that’s six in the morning. I got it all worked out for who had kid duty so I could make the run. Then she says let’s meet at 5:30 so she could go to dragon boat practice downtown at 9 a.m. I know, she’s crazy!
But I agreed to meet at 5:30. Who’s crazy now?
We all met and started our run. Since I don’t have Sid and his stroller with me I had to put my water and snack in a little back pack (not the best idea). There was no way I could do 9-10 miles on 16 ounces of water. I was happy I had all the water, but later in the day my back hurt.
At first I’m running along at pace with them when I realize I am running too fast. And by too fast, I do mean too fast for me. Since my lung sickness I can’t run faster than a 12 min/mile or my lungs will explode.
These ladies were running slow for us, but they were probably about a 10 min/mile (or so, I’m just guessing). The first time I had to slow down and walk to take a drink they politely stopped and waited for me. I told them, don’t worry I’ll catch up.
At about 4.5 miles we all stopped for a break, because that’s where the rest room was. After mile 5 I had to stop and clip a toenail because it had cut into the toe next to it and was starting to hurt.
I ended up walking about half of mile six. I had decided I needed the break and I told myself at mile 7 I would run the remaining three miles. Because three miles is easy.
The other three ladies stopped at mile 7 for a break and for me to catch up. At which point D and I told A & H to go on ahead and we would see them back at the cars.
That was the longest three miles of my life. After about a mile I look up and see the bridge that, not only do we have to get to, but we have to pass.
OH MY GOD! I’M NEVER GONNA MAKE IT!
But I have to make it, because, well that’s where my car is. So we walked and we ran and we walked and we ran. We kept putting one foot in front of the other and continued with our forward motion. And we made it back to our cars. After we completed the 10 mile distance. To find A & H waiting for us with coffee.
Yep. My very first double-digit.
I had thought adding one more mile shouldn’t have been that hard, but it was actually two more miles. Because last week was only eight miles. I also realized that I had not run at all from Sunday to Saturday. That was a huge mistake. I need to run at least two shorter runs in between these long runs. My body just isn’t conditioned to wait that long.
We are going to try to do another 10 miler this weekend, then 9 the weekend before the big race.
I Tri and Craft 