Why hello there, long lost friend!

Oh hey!  I still have a blog here floating around in cyberspace!  I can't believe it's been nearly 3 years since I last posted here.  Haha, oops!  So much for regular posting!  No promises that I'll actually keep up with it this time around, but I figured I'd check in and make a post.
Sooo...what have I been up to?  Well, pretty much balancing being a wife, a momma, and working.  I'm still with the same company, although I'm in a different department now that suits my skill set much better.  I've still got my etsy shop, although I don't do much with it.  As of late, I've been doing more in the realm of designing stuff for shirts for hubby's high school swim teams.  Those have been so much easier and faster to do since he bought me a heat press 2 seasons ago!  Speaking of which, his boys team won the state meet this past year!  What a ride that was!
As a family, we've recently taken up the sport of archery, and we've discovered that we love it immensely!  We don't have any plans to hunt, but tournaments are a whole lot of fun!  There's a range nearby that we've joined, and we try to get out there at least a couple of times a week.  It's a great excuse to get outside and just spend quality family time together.  A huge plus is that there's no phone service out there, so we get to truly unplug for a few hours whenever we go out.  I suppose that I'll probably start adding archery updates to this here blog if I start posting regularly again!
Sadly, I didn't get around to planting my garden this year.  The winter and spring was so wet and cold this year, and the weather didn't cooperate enough for me to want to get outside to actually plant anything at the right times.  I'm missing all my fresh veggies this year!  Hopefully next year I'll have more ambition, and more cooperative weather to get out and plant something!
Well, I suppose that's really all I have to share right now.  Until next time (which hopefully will be sooner than 3 years from now again)!

Garden update

I figure I may as well share garden updates!  Even if no one else reads this, it's fun for me to go back and look at the progress!
Lots of growing going on this week.  I swear come fall, the patio will be nothing but a big, huge pumpkin plant!  I pulled the peas out this past weekend.  They were pretty well done, as the plants had started to wither.  That, and there was some sort of bug infestation on them and I didn't want it spreading to the rest of the garden!

I have another round of strawberries growing again!  I think I counted about a dozen the other day, and there's more flowers on the plants today!

The flowers that the boy wanted to plant are finally starting to flower!  I wish I could remember for the life of me what they are though!

I have 2 cucumbers, and I think this one is just about ready to harvest.

When I pulled the peas out, I moved the watermelon vines to where they were growing.  I have no idea how big the watermelons are going to get, but it's sure fun to watch them grow!

In addition to the garden, we also have a ton of blackberry bushes growing on the other side of the fence in the back yard.  I hate the yearly battle with them to keep them from taking over, but I sure do love the berries!  I've already made a cobbler out of the harvest, and it turned out pretty good!  I love browsing allrecipes.com for recipe inspiration!  Well, that and pinterest!

Not only do we have a ton of blackberry bushes, but we also have an apple tree in our backyard.  I think it's a braeburn apple tree, but I don't know for sure.  All I know is that it is completely LOADED with apples this year!  One of these days I'm going to have to figure out how to prune the thing.  Looks like I'll be running the dehydrator for a few days making apple chips here in another couple months.

That's it for my garden update this week!  Stay tuned for another update (hopefully) next week!

My backyard garden

Without looking like I'm jumping on the gardening bandwagon, I'm jumping on the gardening bandwagon!  I've done some container gardening for the last couple of years in our back yard, and it's been enjoyable.  There's just something about being able to eat something that you've grown yourself!  It tastes so much better!  This year, we made the jump into making a raised bed, and ohmygoodness, has my garden taken off!  4 years ago, it all started with a couple of potatoes that had sprouted some eyes, and I decided to throw them in some dirt and see what would happen.  I haven't turned back after that and end up finding something new to plant every year!
2 years ago, this is what my garden looked like...

Nothing unmanageable...potatoes, radishes, carrots and beans.  Nevermind the propane tank sitting next to the containers...my garden is on our patio!  Got to have some place to bbq too!

This year, we decided to up the game a bit.  Hubby decided it was time to contain my containers so they didn't completely take over the patio!  A quick trip to Home Depot, a couple 2x12's, some garden cloth, and a few bags of dirt later, this is what I got this year!

I had already started everything in the containers, and I didn't want to risk killing everything by transplanting, so the containers just went into the box!  In addition, I picked up a strawberry plant, and by this time, it was time to plant the pumpkins and watermelons.  The watermelons are the row in the middle, and the pumpkins are to the right.  This was in early June this year.  Starting from the back left, I have 2 containers of carrots, followed by 2 containers of beans.  Next row is 2 containers of radishes, a container of potatoes, and a container of sunflowers.  In front of that is some onions, cucumbers, and 2 containers of snap peas.  The other small containers are some sort of flower (I can't remember what exactly it was that my son picked out!), peppers, and broccoli.

Fast foward a few weeks, and the garden liked where it was growing!

The pumpkins took off, and the peas got so tall that they fell over and I had to come up with a way to give them more support!  I think something ate the sunflower seeds, as they never sprouted!  I've never had any luck with broccoli or peppers, so there's nothing growing in those containers.  Oh well...there's always next year to try again!  I also didn't get to the radishes in time, and they've gone to seed, but I really don't know what to do with them, so I'm just leaving them alone and seeing what happens!

A few days later, the pumpkins escaped from the garden box!

The watermelon plants took off too, and I've got so many runners for the strawberries that I'm trying to pawn them off on my family and friends to keep them from taking over too!

We've had a little friend living in the garden for the last couple of weeks too!

He's decided to take up residence in the gone-to-seed radish containers and I often find him in the carrots too.  I'm pretty sure he's not hurting anything, so I'm just letting him be.  My son thinks it's fun to look for our little froggy friend when we go to water everything too!

It's fun to go out and look every day and see how much the pumpkin plants have taken over!  This is what I walked out to yesterday...

My pumpkins and watermelon have several flowers on them!  There's a couple of cucumbers growing as well (finally!).  I've harvested enough beans to use for a meal, and they were delicious!  I am the only one in the family that likes peas, and I've been picking at least half a dozen of those a day for the last couple of weeks!  I have to fight the dog for the peas though, as she loves them as well.  I think she may have been the one that got into the garden last week because I happened to look one morning and discovered the pea plants were knocked over into the pumpkins!  There were only a couple casualties to the pumpkin plants, and I think the peas didn't suffer too much harm.  I have no clue how long I'll keep getting peas, but they sure make for a tasty snack in the evenings when I get home from work and before I decide to work on dinner!

Next year, I'll have to do some more research and plan things out a bit better so I don't have plants taking over and choking each other out!  Can't wait to harvest the rest of what we're growing throughout the rest of the summer and into the fall!

Stay tuned for more garden updates!  Hopefully I'll actually devote some more time to blogging here again!  Until next time...

Tulips

So much for posting regularly here anymore!  I guess that's what happens when life gets in the way.  That being said though, I'd really rather be in the moment with my family.  I also need to remember to pull my camera out more too.  Maybe someday I'll get a chance to devote a bit more time to my poor, neglected blog and post more often.
Last weekend, the weather was gorgeous and we decided to head out to the annual tulip festival.  Acres upon acres of tulips in Skagit County, and it's just beautiful.  Hubby and I have gone nearly every year since we've been together.  It's one of the highlights of the year and we look forward to going every time.  Tulips are our favorites and there are so many different varieties to see.  The trick is to go early in the morning in order to beat the crowds.  Morning light is better for photographs anyway as well.
In any case, I figured I'd share a couple pictures.  I'm not nearly as good of a photographer as my hubby, but I enjoy getting out to take some pictures as well when I get a chance.  Enjoy!

An unintended blogging break

Well, well, well...it certainly has been a LONG time since I last posted anything!  It was unintended, that's for sure!  Summer was great, and after vacation life got somewhat turned upside down.  To make a long story short, I was laid off from my job that I had held for nearly 10 1/2 years.  It created quite the upheaval in our lives, but it turns out that it was a blessing in disguise.  To tell the honest truth, I wasn't happy where I was.  It was time for a change.  While the change didn't happen the way I wanted to, the steps were all God-ordained and orchestrated.  I had a lead on a couple of jobs at the time of being let go.  One of them fell through, and the other one took a bit more patience!  I feel so fortunate that while I had applied for unemployment and got that ball rolling, the timing worked out where I didn't even get a single check!  It was a very trying couple of weeks.  I sent out probably close to 30 applications/resume's.  During that time, I also had the blessing of being able to do some real, much needed deep cleaning on the house!
In my days at home, I also faced rejection after rejection of the applications that I had submitted.  Talk about a blow to one's self-worth!  I am so blessed to have an amazing, loving, supportive husband who stands by my side and is my biggest cheerleader.  Truth be told, while it was quite the stressful time for us, we were also both completely at peace in our situation.  The day that my severance pay was up was the day that I got a phone call from the other lead on a job that I had been waiting for!  I started at my new job the next morning.  Several hours after that phone call, I received another phone call for an interview, and in the following weeks, received at least half a dozen more phone calls for interviews.  Truly, when it rains, it pours!  I've been at my new job for 2 months now, and I'm absolutely LOVING it!  It is a position that is completely different from my previous job.  There's nothing much that I'm doing in this job that really fits into my skill-set from my previous job, and I'm perfectly ok with that.  With as much as I don't do so well with change, this is a completely welcome change for me.  I gained many, many computer skills in my previous position that I can easily keep up on by just tinkering around on the computer here and there.
While my dream is still to be able to be a stay-at-home momma, right now it's just not feasible financially for us to do so.  Hopefully someday that dream will still have a chance at coming true.  Through everything that has happened over the last few months, I know that ultimately God has a plan for our lives and orchestrates our steps.
As far as posting here, I hope to be able to get back to more consistent posting again soon!  Once the hustle and bustle of the holidays have passed, things should settle down and I can get a more solid routine going again!  Until then, from our family to yours, I hope you have a very merry Christmas!

Creative Memories Update

So, I don't really push my Creative Memories stuff here.  I'm really just not a pushy person.  However, in light of recent events over the last few months with them, I figured I'd share some information about what I know.  I'm just a lowly base-level consultant.  I do it because I love the albums and tools.  I haven't found any that are at the same quality level out there.
In any case, here's what I know as of this point:
The last chance ordering period ends July 31st.  This is for albums, pages, page protectors and tape runner refills. (These items are made in-house and they will make as many as are ordered.  It will take weeks or even a couple months for them to get everything out)
August 9 is the day when persona orders need to be in their hands.
August 21 is the last day to use product certificates, as well as the last day to order any other while supplies last product
August 31 is the day that all personal consultant sites, as well as creativememories.com will be taken offline
September 23 is the last day for any orders in the digital center
A new company is relaunching on November 1.  What this company will have for a product line has yet to be made known.
Now you know what I know.  I don't push it here, but if you need any product, there's a link to my site over on the sidebar on the right.  I'm still trying to determine if I'm going to stick with it when the relaunch happens.  Only time will tell.

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