Tomorrow is Valentines and my office has organized a good old fashioned party where we are handing out Valentines to each other and having a bag decorating contest.
I have designed everything on my Cricut and tonight will cut everything out, put it all together. Nothing like waiting until the last minute to finish up, especially when I have been designing and making plans for two weeks. I will say that my valentines are based off of the create a critter cartridge and a quick search of animal puns. Since my time is short, I will once again use the print and cut feature with my machine. While not as impressive as piecing each animal together, I think with some added dimension I can make them stand out.

I bought a couple of new toys that came in last week and I immediately loaned them out to my church for a video our pastors are shooting. I bought a 3 piece umbrella light set and a softbox for a quick studio photography setup. Once I get them back I plan on taking them for a spin, I have already told the kids that we will be doing some portraits and I'm hoping to use it for taking pictures of things that I make. Wyatt is excited because he wants to use it for making videos on you tube. Yeah, we'll see about that. Who knows, maybe I'll start making videos. I think right now I'll start with taking better pictures first.
I seem to have a renewed love for my photography and wanting to learn how to be more effective in editing and overall composition. We''ll see once I get the chance to set up and play around with the light set and then start working in photoshop elements to play with the images.
One of the new products that I'm looking into getting is a pocket printer from Amazon. It will be nice to have quick picks off my phone and to be able to create, when I do create, fun new sizes on my pages.
Maybe my new found creativity has to do with a co worker who just bought a new DSLR camera after suffering through a point and shoot. Maybe its a new book from Amy Tangerine that has me wondering where to start again creatively. And maybe it could be that I don't want to work 7-3:30 five days a week. Whatever the case may be, I'm looking at the big guy upstairs and taking baby steps to get moving.

Cub Scout blue and gold 2017

So I received a text Thursday night, could I make 10 centerpieces for the blue and gold ceremony that was on Saturday morning the 28th. Trish said to make it simple. Looking at my schedule, I agreed and during my breaks at work, I planned everything out. Even though Wyatt is no longer a cub scout, I still have friends whose boys are and I also had my Cricut cartridge Do Your Best that I had been wanting to use. Sadly the cartridge came out after Wyatt's Blue and Gold. Now I get to use it on his scrapbook.
 Another one of the new things that Cricut has done is create and app, that is still in beta testing, where I can create on my phone. Oh Hallelujah! I was able to start and name each project so that when I got home I could put in the final tweaks and hit go. Since I was on such a time crunch I opted for using the print and cut feature. YES! YES! YES! In less than two hours I was about 90% done with my work. I was so confident, I ran to Hobby Lobby to look for wood bases and, you know, anything else I may need.
After I came home, Rob decided to get in on the fun by drilling holes in all the bases for me and Kelly helped by gluing most of the pieces together.

 This fire was my biggest pain, it didn't want to stay glued together and then I added to the fun by painting with a thin layer of stickles glitter glue to give it more dimension. I had seen this project done on the Cricut website and it looked so easy, but man did I learn some lessons.
I decided to make each table a theme and while I did run into some glitches, like how the bear, wolf and webelos signs would not flatten for print and cut and how also the space ship, boat and car wouldn't flatten for print and cut, made me rethink things.
I also need to remind myself to edit my phone photos before I upload to google. Yikes, I need to crop. If I remember I'll edit and replace these guys.
From what I've been told the centerpieces were a big hit and on a couple, people tried to walk away with the tent and the glass framed oath.
I'll take that as a compliment.

 

They say its your birthday....

Happy 46th birthday to my Rob. You are now officially middle aged, lol.
 We celebrated with most of our family Sunday afternoon by going to a new restaurant, Lin's grand buffet where he grossed out Chelsea by eating the little octopus from his stir fry. We really liked the restaurant and everyone is talking about going back soon.
On Tuesday, his actual birthday we gave him his gifts, some funko pop Star Wars characters, an AK-47 shirt and a copper pot. In lieu of cake, I had him stop off at Nadine's and pick up some of his favorite treats.
Overall I think he had a pretty good day, but I always want to do more for him. He works hard and is such a great guy, we deserves the world.
50 is just a few years away and my hope and prayer is to go ALL out for that one.