Sunni Days

Catching Up

Life seems to have taken on a whirlwind quality over the past 3 years since I began to keep a blog. Rather than continuing to have attending regularly to my blog as something I feel is "something I should be doing" in addition to everything else in my  life, it's time to make a change of purpose. I will continue to use it as a record of books I have read as that is a hobby that I have loved reviving over the past few years. Reading has always been a huge part of my life and it seems that over the years, it has taken a backseat to a lot of other interests. I think this began as I was raising my 3 children and at that point, I was out of the habit of reading on a regular basis. Over the past few years though, it's a daily part of my life again and I am loving it. I have found a few authors that write in a style that keeps my interest and makes me want to keep reading. I am sure there are many others out there to try and I will continue to add new ones along the way. With the fact that I read for short periods at a time, I need books that move along quickly and aren't too muddled down in lengthy descriptions but have plots that are constantly evolving without too much attention from me. I have found it very satisfying to be able to look through the listing of books I have read in the past few years. It makes me want to read even more!

With the addition of personal sites to Shutterfly's website, I am still toying with the idea of whether I want to continue posting my layouts and/or photos to my blog or simply use the Shutterfly personal blog as a place for photo related items. It is just another thing to be done and I am at a point in my life where time is of a premium again and the little "luxuries" don't seem to be as important. With the addition of our sweet little granddaughter, Makenzie Shay, on January 13th of this year, my time spent working with photos and layouts and ultimately, Shutterfly books will be even more of a priority.

This past year I have had the opportunity to create quite a few photo books through Shutterfly of different types and am so pleased with the results. I have been able to show them to family and friends and it has prompted them to check out the Shutterfly site and find what types of products they offer that will work for their photo needs. I am pleased to be associated with the company as part of their Digital Scrapbooking Advisory team as they offer so many great products that work not only for digital scrappers but for anyone who takes photos on a regular basis.

The majority of my layouts are posted in my gallery at Scrapbook-Elements. With the addition of a new photo subject, I get to make a bit of a change in my scrapping and actually add the color PINK to my layouts! :) It's already been fun using pink and hearts and bits of flowers and fluff. I created a brag book album for our grandson, Hayden, and I imagine I will do the same for Makenzie along with all of my other scrapping in the 12x12 size.

This year there has been a lot of hub-bub around the digital scrapping community about Project 365. I think that this can as easily be Project 52 or Project 12 because not everyone has the ability, desire or ambition to take photos each day of the year, and then take the time to put them into some sort of layout for record keeping. The cost of this type of a project can be rather prohibitive as well. I prefer the idea of a year in review type of thing with 12 sets of 2 page layouts for each month, which would result in a fabulous 24 page Shutterfly book at the end of the year. Each December digital scrappers all around are scrambling to get their calendars done for the next year or put together year in review books to use as gifts. This Project 12 would definitely take the last minute pressure off.

Last year I scrapped 200 layouts of some kind. Some of them were quick pages, some used templates and some were created by me from the bottom up. I also created several 8.5x11" photo books through Shutterfly and believe it or not, those can be very time consuming to create as you are working with some very specific sizes, orientation and period of time for the most part. I also used 2 of the pre-designed Shutterfly books - Everyday Life and Year in Review - so between all that I did this past year, I have opted to set my goal for layouts to be scrapped at 365. So far this year, I have completed 22 of them so I feel that I've made a pretty good start.

My cousin recently sent me a large envelope of very old family photos so I will be working on scanning those soon and will take the opportunity to get some of my own older photos scanned so I can start working on some layouts of the years past of my own parents, myself and my children.

Adding all of this to my schedule that is heavily involved with the admin work of running my portion of Scrapbook-Elements, extra duties that I have been required to take on due to my husband's broken ankle at the beginning of December, and the privilege of taking care of Hayden and soon, Kenzie on a regular basis, I am pretty busy and the days fly by way too quickly. Therefore updates will be far and few between here on ye olde blog and I am happy to have made the decision as focus on my family is the most important thing in my life.

First Visit to the Dentist

Times have changed and now it seems that parents are asked to take their children for their first visit to the dentist at the age of 1. Hayden had his first visit just before he was 13 months. It went well and he got a good report. All of his teeth look good and are coming in right on schedule. I asked Mommy if she had taken any pictures while they were there. She said it was hard enough to hold him, so she didn't even think about pictures. Guess she should have taken a camera toting grandmother along with her. :)

The current Create It Collect It quick page exchange at Scrapbook-Elements features the Rigmarole page set and an add on set called Tooth by Mikki Livanos. Both sets are available at a 25% discount in the  Spotlight section at SBE for the duration of the challenge. Even though I didn't have any photos from this milestone, I did have a great photo from Hayden's 1 year photo shoot at Kiddie Kandids that did a pretty good job of showing off his little teeth. The layout is available as a quick page, with and without the dental words, for all of those who are participating in this particular quick page exchange at SBE.

A New Friend

 A few days after Hayden turned 1, he was playing on the floor on a pile of pillows and a comforter. He was having fun but he just looked like he needed a friend to enjoy it with. I went to the closet and pulled out a big brown bear that had been given to my youngest daughter long ago. The bear is about the same size as Hayden so it was interesting to watch him meeting it for the first time. He was a bit cautious about it and took a while to warm up to him. He was more interested once I put them both in a chair side by side. They now are good friends and Hayden frequently snuggles up to the bear and likes to lay on him when he is playing on the floor on the comforter.

 

I dressed up a couple of the Preppy Quick Pages by Kim Higueria that can be found at Scrapbook-Elements. I used brushes by Robyn Gough for the frames and the heart. The alpha is from a set by Tracy King called Marbled Solids.

 

Another Crazy Month

May 2008 was a month with record low temperatures which made the slide into summer a much longer ride. June, however, brought us record number of days of 110 and over. Being very vigilant about our electric usage to try to cover the cost of the changes we have made throughout our house, we were rewarded with an electric bill that was $100 less than the previous year. Considering how darn hot June was, we were quite pleased. July has been a very different story. This is the month when the monsoon season starts and we are hit with early evening build up of clouds, dust storms, lightning and thunderstorms and occasionally, a bit of rain to go with all of the drama. This year we have actually had rain without the drama. A few nights ago the skies got dark and around 8pm, they let loose with a tremendous amount of rain. It rained hard but not hard enough to damage plants, etc. The rain came down hard and of course, the water pooled in no time as it couldn't soak into the ground fast enough and caused problems in some areas. It rained on and off through the night and even into the next morning at some places. Over the  next 2 days there was intermittent rain here and there and we actually got a wee bit of it again. We seem to live in an area that the rain avoids so we were thrilled to get as much as we did. The temperatures have been well under 100 for the past week and the humidity hasn't been all that bad as it often is when the temps drop.

However, the humidity has been very high in our house! Just before the rainy days, we experienced a bit of a leak in the overflow pipe that is supposed to drain the condensation out of our new air conditioner. It seems the pipe that drains it was clogged a bit and before the clog released itself, it did backup a bit..enough to soak the towel that John used to catch the water. Luckily he noticed a gurgling sound when he went out into the garage and caught it before it got worse. In that time though, it seems that the house pulled in humid air that wasn't having the moisture removed from it because of the clog and our house became rather humid. It began to feel like we were running an evaporative cooler rather than an air conditioner. We called out the company that had installed our unit to have them check it. They installed some little gizmo that is supposed to turn off the AC should something like this happen again. In the meantime, we didn't turn off the fan when it happened so I guess that is what continued to pull in the moist air.

We are actually now hoping for some more hot, dry days so we can open our doors in the evening and morning to do a little air exchange. We have tried that the last few days because it's been unbelievably cool for Phoenix but it only seems to help on a temporary basis. The humidity isn't as high as it had been at the worst so it's getting better but not soon enough. I actually found packaged cupcakes in our pantry today that had been subjected to the week or so of humid air and they had a bit of mold growing on them. It's suddenly like living in the east or along the coast here in our home in the desert! Crazy stuff!

On a Scrapping Roll

I have found a wee bit of free time the last couple of days and managed to get a few layouts done using the templates from a couple of the challenges at Scrapbook-Elements. This layout was done with a template from last week's Hooked On Templates challenge. It's not available any longer though as a free download. The template was by Mikki Livanos and I just love the summer sun word border that she added. It really made the template unique.

Following his swimming lessons in April, Hayden now spends a lot of time in their pool. The water had warmed up enough by June and he happily paddles around in his little floating chair surveying the pool area and watching what everyone else is doing in the water.

This week's Hooked on Templates challenge is a template by Kim Hollibone. I used it to scrap some rather colorful photos of Hayden in his little car. With the wide variety of colors in the photos, I figured the best thing was to put him in a layout with more bright colors. I used Quirky Street by Tracey Monette and put Hayden in a scene that looks like he is driving in the big city. This little car is so cute in the fact that the engine comes apart so he can "fix" it. While we were there a few days ago, we watched as Hayden's daddy showed him how to take it apart and put it back together again. Being all boy, he watched closely and gave it a try himself. It's really neat to watch how a little boy gravitates to male activities so easily.

The July template challenge offers a template by Marge Wirth. At first, I was stumped on how to use it as I wasn't sure what her intention was for the layered area that she included that looked sort of like a paper tablet. I decided to do overlapping photo mats with a repeating photo and really liked the end result. I used the alpha from Tracey's Quirky Street, which is also available as a stand alone alpha at SBE. I used papers from Phuoung's Slice of Summer set that is now available at SBE but was also included in the recent collab grab bag that was available for one week only at SBE.

We decided that Hayden's playpen needed some of those plastic ball pit balls to fill it for him to have his own little special ball pit. When Grampa brought them home, he was soooo excited about them and followed him from the front door all the way to the back where he watched as they were dumped into his playpen that is in my office. Grampa tends to overdo things just a wee bit where his little Hayden is concerned <grin> so he bought a lot more balls than we needed for him! We gave a bag of them to his Mommy so she could fill their playpen at home as well. The balls do keep him busy now as he likes to toss them into a plastic bowl we put in for him to use and throwing them out at our little dog Minnie seems to be vastly entertaining to both of them!

Hayden has always enjoyed looking at the photos of him as well as the layouts that I have created for his brag book and photo books. But it seems now he is becoming even more interested in looking at them because he can actually communicate what he is seeing and what he likes about the pages. I have loved creating this story of his life for him but it's even more fun now that he can show his appreciation for it and be involved in some way.

Hayden's First Birthday Book

Since I had a free 8x8 photo book as a thank you gift from Shutterfly, I decided to put together a book of Hayden's first birthday festivities, from his birthday party to his actual birthday events to the first haircut that happened just a couple of days after his birthday. This transition took him from a baby to a one year old who looks like a little boy now instead of a baby. I started with some templates by Misty Cato that I greatly modified to create my pages. I wanted a clean lines look with the emphasis on the photos. I was quite pleased with the resulting book.

Click here to view this photo book.

Garlic Deviled Eggs

This month we are working on Outdoor Eating recipes for the card exchange at SBE. I added a recipe for deviled eggs with a touch of garlic. There's a tip included that will help you get those deviled eggs to the picnic or barbeque without them getting all squished and flattened!

Set used is Spring Love by Alma Townsend - Available at Scrapbook-Elements.com on June 22nd

Our Energy Saving Efforts

Our electric bill just seems to keep going up and up..and more than just the standard rate increases that we get each year. In the last few years, we have gone from a household of 4 to only 2 with a little one here a couple days a week. We both work from home so we are in the house using computers all day but nothing more than is necessary is running. We decided to replace our 15+ yr old AC heat pump at the end of January to see if that would make a significant difference. At this point, we have a air conditioner that is much quieter on the outside, much louder inside the house and an air filtration system that has really made a significant difference in the air quality in our home by trapping a lot of small dust particles with the electrostatic filter. We had our ducts cleaned at the time of installation as well.

With very little change in our first month's bill, we started to explore other energy hogs that maybe we could control. We discovered that our water heater is the one that was original with the house which was built in 1985. Amazing that it's lasted this long but it's still going strong. However, when we experimented with turning it off to see what kind of impact it would have on our meter, we found that it is sucking up a tremendous amount of energy keeping water hot that we are using very infrequently. We decided to forestall the replacement for the time being and have added a $40 timer and have found a pretty good system of time for it to run to give us more than adequate hot water for our needs on our schedule. Eventually we will replace it but we started with other things first.

Next on the replacement agenda was our refrigerator. Since we purchased it at the time we moved into our home in 1998, I have never really liked it. Even with the 2 of us here, the side by side system just didn't work for me. Things were always shoved in the back out of sight or piled on top of each other to try to make some sort of use out of the available room. So we replaced it with a french door, bottom freezer system and I absolutely love it! The refrigerator is very spacious and we have much more in it now than we did in the old one and there is still lots of room. You can really organize things the way you use them so it's just much more efficient. The freezer is a pull out drawer. In addition to the bottom basket, there is the ice drawer plus 2 slide out basket. I use one for meats and the other for veggies, pie crusts and other miscellaneous items. We have a small upright freezer in the garage and we have emptied it because there was enough room in the new bottom freezer to hold everything. For now, we have turned off the outside freezer to test how much energy it is using and to determine if we still need it in the future.

The first week of May we replaced our dishwasher and our stove as well. Each of these new pieces of equipment have energy star ratings that just blow away the old items so even though each new appliance won't make a huge difference by itself, we are hoping that with all of the changes we are making that we will see a nice reduction in our bill. At least for the first year or so, that money will go back to paying for the appliances but it won't be long before we see a reduction in energy expenses..at least that's the theory! I don't use the stove or oven very much but in the few times I have used them so far this month, I have been very pleasantly surprised at how well they have worked and the options I have that I didn't have before. Even the dishwasher has provided some nice changes. It's incredibly large and gives a lot of options with fold down portions of the drawers to be able to put some rather bulky items in. The spray arms are at the bottom of the 2 drawers so you don't have one of those sprayers that come up in the middle and take up a bunch of room.

The last major thing to be done at this point was adding extra insulation in the attic. We had that blown in today. I don't know if we will be able to actually tell the difference but if it adds to reducing our energy usage and our bill, it will be well worth the money. We have already seen about a 1/3 drop in usage since last year this time so the efforts are definitely paying off. We have also switched to a different rate plan that is more suited to our needs and the costs of peak and non-peak time are both cheaper with the new plan. Being in our home for 10 years it was time to do some improvements of this type. Each thing should help the value of our home, which is vital in this rough economic time where home prices have dropped and you need to be diligent about keeping your home in good shape to help it retain the best value you can.

The Amazing Month of May 2008

Well, for the 2nd time this month, we are having rain showers here in Phoenix. According to the records, this is the first time since May 2001 that we have had measurable rain. We got a bit of light rain earlier this month when we had a storm come through but as I type now just after noon, the rain is coming down at a fairly steady rate and the temperature is a whopping 57 degrees! The expected high for today is 70. Absolutely unheard of for May in Phoenix. This is more like our winter weather. I am totally enjoying having all of the doors and windows open, listening to the rain falling and feeling a little bit chilly as it was only 3 days ago that we had a few days of temperatures just under 110 degrees, after hitting our first 100 degree day which seemed to open the floodgates. Now we have winter weather! Crazy crazy weather..so much for global warming nonsense!


We planted flowers recently for the summer. Because of our intense summer heat, I have rarely tried but John set up a watering system for my planters are we are giving it a try. When we moved into this house, there was a two-tier fountain but the entire time we have lived here, it just has been a giant pain. There is a lot of water surface and it's hard to keep clean. There originally was a queen palm that hung over it and that thing dropped some sort of palm oil into the water which made it impossible to keep clean. With that removed, we still only kept water in it during the winter months as the water simply evaporated too quickly in the heat of the summer. So we finally drilled holes in the bottom of the fountain and added a layer of rocks for drainage and have filled the fountain for flower beds now. These flowers are doing well but the ones we planted in the ground in an area that gets full sun most of the day have been struggling a bit. We got them in the ground but the temperatures shot up so quickly they didn't get a lot of time for adjustment and it's been difficult to keep them watered enough to keep them from failing. I am sure the new flowers and plants are enjoying these few days of cool, moist air. 

Unusual Weather

In light of the weather the parts of our country has experienced lately, today is just a minor blip I suppose. But for us here in Phoenix, this is a very unusual weather day. It's May and we are looking at triple digits to appear any day..we've been hovering in the high 90s the last few days so it's imminent. But this morning, we woke to gusty winds and very cool temperatures. We live in an area of homes where there are a lot of palm trees, with 2 in our own front yard. When the wind blows those fronds around, they can be very noisy and give the impression that it is even windier than it is. But today, the noise and fury match the amount of wind. The air even has a slight smell of rain to it. Rain in May is virtually unheard of so I really don't expect anything beyond a possible sprinkle here and there. Today is just a nice diversion from the quickly approaching summer temperatures that force us to remain inside with doors and windows closed, listening to the sound of the air conditioner coming on way too many times a day.