rolling along

well, it has been a long long time since i visisted my blog!! the gypsy life rolls along the road. i am still commuting from sonoma a few days a week and resting my head in comfortable beds all over the bay area in between time. i do love it but it is taking it's toll. it makes for tiredness and lots of yawns!! ah well, that is life. i am grateful to have a job and don't want to give up my job in berkeley and i really don't want to live in sonoma full time. it is a beautiful place with the vineyards all colorful for fall but it just isn't where i feel at home. maybe those high school and early adult years i spent there are just memories i don't always want to be reminded of!!!
what's new? not much i guess.
i spend my days at work and they just seem to be going by faster and faster. i spend my evenings with people i love and they love me back. two nights a week i am at the warm and friendly home of the pagayonan's. i love, love, love my girls. tara, samona and ella. otherwise known as mummer higgins, mo-mo and bebe. cute, cuddly, fun and full of love. i feel so at home and part of the family. i don't know how i lived my life without them before i had the great fortune to meet them.
weekend days come and i get to spend time with my grandkids. gabriel is so smart and the most loving boy i a have know since his father was his age. lily just turned 2 last week and she is so much fun. she always makes us laugh. i am so, so blessed to have my kids and grandkids. i love them so much. kelsey roo is so very cute and smart and loving. always a princess and ready to play with her nana. i wish i could see them all everyday. i don't know how grandmothers who live far away from their kids and grandkids survive.
my mom and i got a nintendo wii and we have had so much fun playing mario party 8 and the disney princess enchanted journey game! we pre ordered animal crossing and it should arrive tomorrow. i am really looking forward to playing friday, saturday and sunday. my mom is so much fun she is just a little kid stuck in a grandma's body like me. i am so grateful to have her in my life.
i miss my friends because i don't get to see them as much as i used to, since i am on the road a lot and in sonoma for most of the weekends. i don't get to scrapbook every weekend like i used to.
i have done liz's creating intentions kits every month and i love them. they have helped me grow so much and changed my life. i wish everyone i know would do them and learn what i have from them.
one last thought..........Twilight comes out this weekend and i am going to storm the movie theater!! how about you?

check this out!!

Watch this video and check out Creating Intentions

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvzVFldSLk8

Liz has really created a method of scrapbooking that can change your life. She is such a smart and beautiful woman. Listen to her video message and check out her web site. Look back often as she will be coming out with new Creating Intentions kits, DVDs, book and retreats.
It's truly amazing.
My wish for all of you is to awaken to your inner thoughts and intentions and let them inspire you into action.

the gypsy life

well, i can't believe i have not blogged in soooo long.
i have recently begun living the gypsy life. due to an issue with me husband i recently felt the immediate need to leave my house for an indefinite, maybe forever, amount of time. so i am now living the gypsy life by "living" at my mom's in sonoma and commuting to berkeley to keep my job. to cut down on the driving miles i am staying at one of the kid's house on mondays and then staying at my friend liz's house on tuesdays and wednesdays since i "nanny" for her on those evenings anyway. so far, the gypsy life is not so bad. living out of the boxes and bags in the back of my car, realizing just how little a person really needs to survive the daily living of working by day and babysitting by night. since i don't have my computer hooked up anywhere.......i will probably not be blogging much except my long boring word bloggings, no pictures of projects or grandkids or interesting things like that.
emotionally i am feeling better than i have in months and months. it is so amazing what taking care of yourself and not worrying about how to fix someone else can do for you! so anyone who was worried about me, worries be gone...........i am fine. i am even better than fine.
for all of you who lent your ears, shoulders, arms and homes to me in the past few weeks, Thank You all. i have the best friends and family a girl could ever have.
i will keep you all apprised of the gypsy life as the days go by.
xoxo, nanc

mountain girl returns to the city life

well, i am back from my little trip to the mountains. i just love it there in shaver lake. it is heaven on earth. we stayed in a great cabin home that was like a mansion compared to our family cabin that we usually stay in. we were spoiled by the hugeness of it as well as the cleanliness and lack of buginess. our family cabin is ancient and kind of icky and buggy. it has been in my family for a very long time and was built by my great grandfather so it has much sentimental value and lots of great memories but sometimes it is nice to stay in a big, clean, bug free place!! of course one of the highlights for me was having my grandkids there, i got to bring gabriel with me even though his parents could not come 'cos they had to attend a wedding and my kelsey girl came with her mom and dad and even my grandog penny was there with her mom and dad. our great family friend kathryn went with us too. so, we were minus my son and daughter in law and my husband, but we managed to have a great time without them!! the weather was great.....not too hot and not too cold. the lake was beautiful and we also spent some time at the great dinky creek where the water is cool and clear and the rocks are worn from the water rushing over them creating natural rock water slides, since the water level is low this year even gabriel and kelsey were able to play in the water and go down the slides.

we also took a trip to mckinley grove which is home to giant seqouia redwood trees. kelsey got stung by a bee there and gabriel dropped his nintendo ds at dinky creek and it went sliding down the rock into the water. that was our only mishaps of the trip. a dead ds and a bee sting. not bad for 5 days in the mountains. family is a wonderful thing and i am so blessed to have my family close to me and be able to vacation together. i wish i could take all the people i love to shaver lake with me and stay there forever!!

gabe and kelsey colored so nicely together while the adults cooked dinner!

kelsey playing in the sand at shaver lake, possibly in the same spot her mother and her nana played in when they were little girls. it really was so great to watch my grandkids do the same things i did as a child at shaver lake. amazing.

here is my gabriel floating in the lake on a lobster! too cute. i am gonna have to do a layout of this picture with a picture of me on a floatie in the same lake when i was little.

i could not leave out a picture of my sweet grandog penny. she is a chug (part pug part chihuahua) and she belongs to my youngest girl nicole and her boyfriend cory. she went swimming too with her life jacket on but i did not get any pics of that. darn it.

so anyway, now my mountain vacation is over and i am back to the land of reality. my husband lost his job, my car got towed from in front of my house yesterday due to an issue that is making it not pass smog so i had a sticker on the back window with the extension from the dmv but it apparently was expired the end of july so since i had it parked on the street instead of in the driveway they towed it away, the bastards! and it is going to cost me almost 400 dollars to get it back tomorrow. welcome home. i know life could be much worse and there are people so much worse off than me but i am just having a crappy time! i had a super bad day at work today and spent some time hiding in the bathroom, crying. it was not a good day at all, but i got invited by a friend tonight to share in a celebration of something special in her life and that made life so much better. i spent the evening among friends, laughing and talking and eating. just what i needed. so tomorrow i will spend a third of my paycheck rescuing my car from the pokey and then i will somehow figure out a way to pay the bills, the rent and buy groceries and pull myself up out of this pit i am in and trust in god to make things right again. and maybe even get a winter trip in to shaver lake and for sure visit it again next summer. somebody please slap me and tell me to get a grip and stop being so down and keep my chin up. come on, do it, slap me, a good one upside the head and tell me that there are people out there who have it way, way worse than me!!! i know it's true but it just isn't helping to think about that too much right now!! ok, throw me some cheese to go with my whine and i will shut up.

love to all of you out there that i love and hold so dear to my heart. you all know who you are don't you?

going to the mountains

i am leaving on thursday to go to one of my favorite places, shaver lake. it is a wonderful place in the sierra national forest up above fresno. i have been going there most every summer my entire life. my great grandfather built a cabin there many, many moons ago. it is still our family cabin and holds a special place in my heart. i will be back on monday afternoon, rejuvinated and with a new lease on life. that is what the peace of the mountains gives me! i wish i could take everyone i love with me and share that peaceful magic. i will also come home with lots of pictures to post.

bye bye miss creative slump pie

well, is everyone having a fun summer?my creative slump is waning and i could not be happier about that. i created with my creative genius friend wendy last week and i couldn't be happier about that either because it had been way too long and we have this great creative chemistry that always brings my mojo back. we created 3 summer layouts with the fabulous new cosmo cricket line mr. campy. they did such a fantastic job with this paper that we were amazed at how little embellishing we felt compelled to do, the paper is so great it sort of is the embellishment!! fun, fun, fun paper.

i continued my creative day by working on my atc's for the august mdw atc swap club. the theme is "your calling card". so i guess it should reflect your style or some other aspect of your personality. if i could draw like the talented miss casey maupin (who drew walmart for the july americana theme), i would have drawn a red mary jane shoe. funny, i wonder if anyone else thinks that reflects who i am? probably not! anyway, i ended up making it pink and red and i used the really pretty eye candy swarovski crystals that creative imaginations recently put in the stores. the atc club is really a lot of fun and i am looking forward to seeing everyone's calling cards. thanks to my pal daniela for putting this club together.

i went to redding a few weeks ago for a long weekend with my friends from high school. my friend linda and i drove up there and stayed with two of our high school friends who now live there in redding. it was a really great weekend. fun and relaxing. we even got to extend our stay by one night when the car broke down just as we were getting ready to leave for home that sunday. we ended up having to stay an extra night and get the car fixed. it was excellent!!

anyway, while there we went to the lss called scraps of life http://scrapsoflife.org/. it was the only store i have ever been to that had more crop space than the space it had product in. serious crop space!! the ladies working there were very nice and they were having a 30% off the whole store sale and there was also a coupon for 40% off of one item. fun. i really love getting together with my high school friends because we have this strong bond that time does not change, ever.

no matter how many months it's been since i saw them last it always just feels like yesterday to me. amazing to me to think that silly crazy teenage girls can form everlasting bonds! i feel so very blessed to have these girls in my life. there are 8 of us in our little group but only 4 of us were able to make the redding weekend. our next get together is in our home town of sonoma in september for vintage festival, i really hope all 8 of us can make it!

here we are me, bonnie, linda and rain. i will have to scan a picture of us from high school and post it for comparison!!!

ok, so see what happens when i don't post for a while? i end up posting a huge long boring thing!!

but i do have one more thing to tell you all. a few nights ago i created with liz pagayonan's creating intentions kit which you can find here http://www.creatingintentions.com/ or click on the link to her blog in my list in the right margin. people, you need to run not walk to your computer and go to her site and buy this kit and do it now. it will change your life, i am not kidding. seriously, it is amazing. liz has created a method for creating art that comes from the depths of your soul. it is absolutely amazing. you need to go to her site and blog and read about it and what it all means. i just don't know how to explain it like she does. it truly is changing my life.

ok, i will shut up now and go to bed, it is late and i do have to get up for work in the morning.

well, one more picture can't hurt, can it? here is my grandaughter kelsey dressed in my clothes being silly. love this girl bunches and bunches.

a month of sundays

my goodness, it has been a month of sundays since i posted here on my little blog. i guess i have been a busy girl. most of the time when the thought hits me to blog it is always about something kind of serious or very deeply thoughtful. i figure some people don't really want to read that kind of a blog so i hesitate to post the serious or pondering type of things. most people i know have their blogs to share their artful, creative projects and all things related. i just really don't feel that i am very artfully creative! especially lately, i have been in a creative funk. i have done a few little things here and there and maybe will take pics and post them later when i am at home. i am at work now, on my lunch break.
i just saw a blog post of some guys i know who are so in love with each other and have two wonderful babies and they were finally able to get married legally. they posted pictures of the whole thing on their blog. it made me cry. i am just so happy for them. it is not for me to judge others and say whether it is right or wrong for people of the same sex to be together. i leave that to God and i know that there are people who believe that it is written in the bible that it is wrong but i myself have never read that in the bible and i believe in a loving God that would never want people to be miserable with a life of trying to be someone they are not, so i believe that if you are gay, so be it. who cares! i want so badly to live in a world where there are no prejudices. that all people love each other no matter the color of their skin or their sexual orientation or their beliefs. so, i am very happy that people of the same sex can now be married just like people of the opposite sex who are in love and want to share their lives with each other. let's leave the judging to God and focus on ourselves instead of criticising others for who they are.
see, i am being all serious and not posting about artfully creative things!!! i guess i am just going to have to be who i am, and just blog about the things i think about and want to talk about. and
hopefully have an artfully creative thing to throw in when the creative mojo hits. i so envy all of you who are so talented and are able to creative beautiful things all the time. i just don't know where my mojo has gone but i want it back. maybe i will take the time soon to do the mdw wishchicks challenges and that will spark some creativity. happy day to all of you, i hope i have not bored you to death.

oh, baby, my show is on

dancin', dancin', dancin'

whoo weee am i happy and clapping my hands!! shaking my booty to the boogie woogie beat!!
my favorite show comes back on tonight. i love, love, love So You Think You Can Dance. Season 4 starts tonight and i can hardly wait to be on the couch watching. So, do you, think you can dance? tell me.

ode to the talented rebecca harper

i finally tried the technique rebecca challenged us to try (on the great mdw blog). i had this idea in my head that i did not want to do it all one color so i painted in one color and embossed in another color rather that clear embossing powder. it looks pretty sloppy and not very cute, but i think i am gonna just deal with it, make it cute somehow and make a book about me. so that is my ode to rebecca the awesome artist who always comes up with the cutest little touches that just make a project stand out. she has a great class coming up at mdw, the cutest father's day book you will ever see anywhere, ever. it is so great. you must check it out here http://www.mydaughterswish.com/calendar.php

and here is my prima embossed chipboard album cover painted in kaiser kraft candy paint (thanks daniela, did you know i used your paint on saturday night?) and ranger stream colored embossing powder, oh yeah and the chipboard letters are heidi swapp.

looks a little crazy doesn't it? well, it is an upside down u for an n and i think it does look pretty weird but like i said, i am just gonna deal with and make it cute someway or another. i will post it again after i cute it up. someone please, post a challenge to finish whatever project we started with becky's technique challenge!

Some like it HOT

I love, love, love this hot heat. I know some might say I am crazy and they are probably right but I love the heat, the hotter the better. I am so happy it is finaly HOT. I am so sick of flannel pajamas and jackets and socks and blankets and cold and wind and gloomy skies. Hooray for summer, it is on it's way. It was even nicely warm in Berkeley today when I left the office for lunch. I had a great lunch with my boss, his wife and my co-worker Brigitte at Filipos on College. I work on Ashby three blocks down from College so we walk up there for lunch a few times a week for lunch. Great paninis and salad at Filipos and a few doors down is my favorite Mediterranean food place. Yummy. If you are ever in Berkeley and you love hummus then you must go to http://www.lamediterranee.net/pages/lamedberkeley.html La Mediterranee, you will love it. Well , I haven't done Rebecca's challenge from the MDW blog yet but I am really itching to do it. I have no idea where my heat gun is though. I think I lost it. Then I think maybe I replaced it with a new one, but then I don't know where it is. Crazy! So I will probably go to MDW and do it there, borrow the heat gun while I am there. But all you girls who know where your heat guns are better get on it and post the link to your submission so you can win that great prize. Rebecca is so great at little touches and techniques that I don't think anyone else does. She is awesome. All hail Rebecca. Happy Heat Wave to all.

embark on embossing

wanna have some fun and maybe win a great prize? head on over to the My Daughters Wish blog http://mydaughterswish.typepad.com/my_daughters_wish/ and read the post from my wish sister rebecca. she posted a really great challenge and she is offering a great prize. i can't wait to do this challenge. check the MDW blog often for posts from the design team members and a new challenge once a week. we are gonna have some fun, and we all know that GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN!

what does it take to be a great mom?

happy mothers day to all the moms i know. i hope you all had a wonderful day. i had a great day.

i got up at the crack of dawn to drive to sonoma to pick up my favorite mom in the whole world, of course that would be my very own mommy. then we drove back down to pleasant hill and went to breakfast with my kids and their kids. we were also joined by my future son-in-law's mom and my daughter-in-law's mom and our friend kathryn who was here for the weekend from santa rosa. we had a fun time and good food at smokin' okies. they have live music at breakfast/brunch time on the weekends too, so that was nice too.

so, what does it take to be a great mom anyway? i think it takes a lot of things starting with faith in God and then add in things like patience, acceptance, and an ablility to remember what it feels like to be a little kid at all ages, and then you definitely need to know when to let go. i have three wonderful kids who amaze me everyday. i love who they have become as adults and parents.

i want to share the words that made me cry today when i read them in the card my daughter cheryl gave me. she told me "this card is simple but it says it all" and here is what it said:
"Growing up, I always felt safe and happy because of your love. And I know that the very best thing I can do as a parent is simply love my children the way you loved me." What a sweet card.

she also put a gift certificate to MDW inside the card. now that even made the card sweeter!!!

(that's the scrapbooker talking, not the mom). i read some more exciting words in the card from my daughter nicole and her boyfriend cory. these words were written by cory "you are such a funny mom and i can't wait to be your son-in-law". now that excites me! they are not engaged but have been together for several years and have lived together for the past few years. even though they talk about their wedding all the time, they are not yet engaged. i am dying for a wedding in the family so i am hoping that these words mean he is getting ready to pop the big question! so, what's your take on what it takes to be a great mom?

here are some pictures of my great mom's day including one of cory kissing nicole!

Happy Saturday

I love Saturday, don't you? My friend Kathryn came down from Santa Rosa today to spend the weekend. It is also my wedding anniversary today. My husband and I were cracking up this morning because neither one of us could say off the top of our head how long we have been married or what year we got married. It has been 11 years. But we have been together for 21 so I think that is why we just never remember the # of years we have been married. Too funny.

So, I spent my day today sleeping in, going to the halfprice bookstore and babysitting my grandkids Gabe and Lily. What a great way to spend the day!

Last night Daniela and I scrapbooked at Scrapbook Territory in Berkeley. Our girlie Liz joined us for a little while. We love to crop there on Friday nights because we love Meredith, she is the girlie that works the crops there. For those of you who don't know her, you are missing out. She is one great girl. She is so funny and fun and we always have a ton of laughs. Here she is a few weeks ago when she was working on an easter egg thingy.

Daniela and I both made a wall hanging for a mothers day gift out of the same paper. I made some more gifts today. Here they are. I hope the Mom's I made them for like them.

Happy Mothers Day to all of you Mom's out there.

sweet pain from the addled brain

On my way to work today my mind went into deep thought mode. I was thinking about why we as human beings tend to set ourselves up for heart ache and disappointment. Do most of us do this or is it just people like me? In particular, I am talking about my pursuit of "emotionally unavailable" people. I have this terrible knack for finding people who are just so dam hard to get close to, and then I can't stop myself from trying. Why is that? Why do we continue to do things that we know in the end will only cause us pain? Is it like playing with that loose tooth you just can't stop wiggling around even though it hurts? On the flip side, I am so grateful to God for having so many great friends and a sweet husband and my wonderful kids, who are all "emotionally available"!!! Well, it's Friday! I am so happy. I love Friday. I will be scrappin' tonight with my girlies. How 'bout you?

informed consent and who do you blog 4

well, here i am. i created this blog 'cos my good pal laura, whom i fondly refer to as la la, told me i needed to have a blog. so, i did it. i really have no idea who would really want to read the everyday thoughts of a crazy person like me, except those who already know and love me, and....
well don't they already know all about me? i mean, honestly, a person like me who talks pretty much non stop to whoever will listen pretty much tells her life story and all her thoughts to all her friends all the time. well, anyway everyone else i know has a blog so i guess it is time i got with the program.
i will do my best to entertain my readers but i want to warn you ahead of time, i tend to write like i talk and may bore you or make you crazy. you have been warned and therefore if you choose to read my blog you will now proceed with what we in the medical field call "informed consent".
thank you to all my friends and fellow design team wish sisters who have blogs so now i can try to fashion my blog by the inspiration i have gotten from looking at all of yours. so tell me, who do you blog for? friends and family? people that don't know you but want to? your arch enemy?
yourself?