Week Two Begins

I have not stopped since I've been here. I had training every night last week and had to work Sunday evening and Monday evening. This evening will be my first night off...I need it. I am working out 3=4 hours a day and going to some classes (I've been to them in the past so I don't go to them all). Wednesday I was exhausted and didn't do as much. I am gradually getting into the routine, but with all my orthopedic issues I have to be incredibly careful not to hurt myself. "KNOCK ON WOOD!"

I love the women who come here. We all have similar backgrounds. There are many professional women and all of them are smart, educated people who have used food to cope with life for years. It doesn't matter how intelligent you are, it really is about the emotions that got us here and the unhealthy lifestyles we have lived. This is a wonderfully safe environment to explore new ways to approach this problem.. We actually get a normal amount of food a day. There are lots of fruits and vegetables, healthy grains and oils, and lower fat proteins. We don't overeat, but this is not a low cal diet. I',m eating about 1500 cals a day. I hope to lose 2 lbs/week (not like the Biggest Loser). I probably won't look different when I return, but I know I will feel much better.

My job is Evening Administrator and Evening Activities Director.
Most of the evenings are full with optional classes like yoga, Kripala or Zumba dance. The nutritionist, who also loves crafts, and I have a meeting this week to decide what to do and fit things into a schedule.

As Evening Administrator my job is to open the gift shop and act as a sales person for 2 hours, then open the snack bar and be a "waitress" for snack. It's hilarious to watch me nuke crackers and cheese, make spritzers, dish out nut butters, clean up, count money and stay organized, while answering the phone, taking messages and being an all round Girl Friday. Their phone system is antiquated and there is a code for everything. The second night I was here, the training person didn't come. I didn't know how to dial out on the phone. An airconditioner went out, I dealt with an irate participant, and then someone decided they needed to go to the hospital for a stomach ache. I dealt with the tummy problem (constipation), acted as a shrink, and got thru the night. It was a true trial by fire. It reminded me of my first night as an intern when I didn't know where anything was and knew virtually nothing. I figured that if I could do that, this job is a piece of cake.

NEW Creative Memories Cards...they record!

Your children and their grandparents will love the newest cards by Creative Memories. You can record, erase and rerecord until satisfied with you message. Easy. Fun. Perfect for Easter, Mother's Day, or just because.

New Butterfly pocket punch

I found this project on the Creative Memories photocenter projects. I think this is one of the most elegant cards I've seen. You can also find this cardstock on my cmsite.I'm planning to make one this afternoon.

Creative Memories quotes to use

Quotes Collection

Baby/Children

•"Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see." - John W. Whitehead

•"I don't know why they say you have a baby. The baby has you." - Gallagher

•"I have found the best way to give advice to your children is to find out what they want and then advise them to do it." - Harry Truman

•"A baby is God's opinion that life should go on." - Carl Sandburg
•"A new baby is like the beginning of all things - wonder, hope, a dream of possibilities." - Eda J Le Shan

•"People who say they sleep like a baby probably don't have one." - Leo J. Burke
•"Children reinvent your world for you." - Susan Sarandon


•"To look out at you gives me enormous hope. You look so competent, so strong, so young, so committed, so ready to take on the future, difficult times and all." - Colin Powell

•"Children are the hands by which we take hold of heaven." - Henry Ward Beecher

Inspirational (Christian)


•"I know the Lord is always with me. I will not be shaken, for He is right beside me." - Psalm 16:8 LB

•"And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you." - Ephesians 4:32

•"Be on guard. Be courageous. Be strong, and everything you do must be done with Love." - 1 Corinthians 16:13-14 LB

•"Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." - Joshua 1:9

•"I know that God will not give me more than I can handle. I just wish he didn't trust me so much." - Mother Theresa

•"Wisdom will multiply your days and add years to your life." - Proverbs 9:11 LB


Inspirational (Daily)
•"Look at everything as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time. Then your time on earth will be filled with glory." - Betty Smith

•"If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun." - Katharine Hepburn

•"Sunsets are so beautiful they almost seem as if we were looking through the gates of Heaven." - Sir John Lubbock

•"All great achievements require time." - Maya Angelou

•"Be the change you want to see in the world." - Ghandi

•"Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: 'I'm with you kid. Let's go.' " - Maya Angelou

•"You can shine no matter what you're made of." - Bigweld, Robots

•"And in the end it's not the years in your life that count. It's the life in your years." - Abraham Lincoln

•"The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." - Helen Keller

•"A dream is a wish your heart makes when you're fast asleep." - Cinderella

•"You make each day a special day. You know how, by just your being you. There's only one person in this whole world like you. And people can like you exactly as you are." Mr. Rogers

•"You must do the thing you think you cannot do." - Eleanor Roosevelt

•"Be strong, be true, be forever who you are." - Karla, Tarzan II

•"The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams." - Eleanor Roosevelt

•"Nothing can dim the light that shines within." - Maya Angelou

•"Life's greatest adventure is finding your place in the Circle of Life." - tag line from The Lion King

•"Be yourself. Everyone else will appreciate the originality." - Unknown

•"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable." - Helen Keller

•"People often say that this or that person has not yet found himself. But the self is not something that one finds. It is something that one creates." - Thomas Szasz

•"The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. - Albert Einstein

•"Every person has a purpose and a reason for being on earth." - Sanaya Roman

•"Just keep swimming." - Dory


Family


•
"Families are like fudge - mostly sweet with a few nuts." - Unknown
•"The family is one of nature's masterpieces." - George Santayana

•"Other things may change us, but we start and end with family." - Anthony Brandt

•"You don't choose your family. They are God's gift to you, as you are to them." - Desmond Tutu


Father/Men


•"He didn't tell me how to live; he let me watch him do it." - Clarence Budington Kelland •"The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother." - Theodore Hesburgh

•"Fatherhood is pretending the present you love most is soap-on-a-rope." - Bill Cosby
•"There is no grandfather who does not adore his grandson." - Victor Hugo

•"A father is someone you look up to, no matter how tall you are." - Unknown

•"Any man can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad." - Unknown


Friendship

•
"The most beautiful discovery true friends make is that they can grow separately without growing apart." - Elisabeth Foley
•"Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints on your heart." - Eleanor Roosevelt

•"Hold a true friend with both of your hands." - Nigerian proverb

•"A friend is one of the nicest things to have, and one of the best things to be." - Douglas Pagels

•"My friends have made the story of my life." - Helen Keller

•"Friendship isn't a big thing, it's a million little things." - Unknown

•"It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

•"If I had to sum up friendship in one word, it would be comfort." - Adabella Radici
•"Friends are the sunshine of life." - John Hay

•"I get by with a little help from my friends" - John Lennon

•"Silences make the real conversations between friends." - Margaret Lee Runbeck


Love


•"Love is all you need." - The Beatles

•"Where there is love there is life." - Indira Gandhi

•"To the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the world." - Bill Wilson

•"Do all things with love." - Oq Mandino

•"How do I love thee? Let me count the ways." - Elizabeth Barrett Browning

•"There is only one happiness in life, To Love and Be Loved." - George Sand

•"Let your love be like misty rains, coming softly, but flooding the river." - Malagasy Proverb
•"This day shall be a love day." - William Shakespeare

•"If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day, so I never have to live without you." - Winnie the Pooh

•"I love you, not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you. I love you, not only for what you have made of yourself, but what you are making of me. I love you for the part of me that you bring out." - Roy Croft

•"To love a person is to learn the song that is in their heart, and to sing it to them when they have forgotten." - Anonymous


Mother/Women


•"All that I am, or hope to be, I owe to my angel mother." - Abraham Lincoln

•"There is a woman at the beginning of all great things." - Alphonse DeLamartine

•"God could not be everywhere, and therefore he made mothers." - Jewish Proverb

•"Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away." - Barbara DeAngelis

•"A mother is someone who can take the place of everyone else, but no one in the world can take her place." - Author Unknown

•"Well-behaved women rarely make history." - Laurel Thatcher Ulricher

•"Grandmas are moms with lots of frosting." Anonymous

•"I remember my mother's prayers and they have always followed me. They have clung to me all my life." Abraham Lincoln
•"A mother is not a person to lean on but a person to make leaning unnecessary."
Dorothy Canfield Fisher
•"The mother's heart is the child's schoolroom." Henry Ward Beecher
•"To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power." Maya Angelou

Pets


•"To err is human, to forgive, canine." - Unknown

•"No matter how little money and how few possessions you own, having a dog makes you rich." - Louis Sabin

•"The more people I meet, the more I love my dog." - Unknown

•"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace." - Milan Kundera

•"If dogs could talk it would take a lot of the fun out of owning one." - Andy Rooney

•"I think dogs are the most amazing creatures; they give unconditional love. For me they are the role model for being alive." - Gilda Radner

•"Some days you're the dog, some days you're the hydrant." - Unknown

•"No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does." - Christopher Morley

•
"Dogs wait for us faithfully." - Marcus Tullius Cicero
•"Dogs come when they're called. Cats take a message and get back to you." - Mary Bly

•"When I play with my cat, who knows if I am not a pastime for her more than she is to me." - Michel deMontaigne

•"Cats don't belong to people. They belong to places." - Wright Morris

•"Cats seem to go on the principle that it never does any harm to ask for what you want." - Joseph Wood Krutch


Sports
•"Champions aren't made in gyms. Champions are made from something they have deep inside them: A desire, a dream, a vision. They have to have last-minute stamina, they have to be a little faster, they have to have the skill and the will. But the will must be stronger than the skill." - Muhammad Ali

•"Champions keep playing until they get it right." - Billie Jean King

•"When someone tells me there is only one way to do things, it always lights a fire under my butt. My instant reaction is, 'I'm gonna prove you wrong!'" - Picabo Street

•"The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. you may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don't play together, the club won't be worth a dime." - Babe Ruth

•"Adversity causes some men to break; others to break records." - William A. Ward

•"Sweat plus sacrifice equals reward." - Charlie Finley

•"It's not the size of the dog in the fight, but the size of the fight in the dog." - Archie Griffin

•"You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them." - Michael Jordan

•"Ask not what your teammates can do for you. Ask what you can do for your teammates." - Magic Johnson

•"Concentration is the ability to think about absolutely nothing when it is absolutely necessary." - Ray Knight

•"To be prepared is half the victory." - Miguel Cervantes



Puzzle (quotes and titles)
•"A cat is a puzzle for which there is no solution."
•"The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity."
•"God made many puzzle pieces, but only those two "cut out" for each other can fit together to create a perfect and beautiful picture." Jessica Cochran
•"The world is a puzzle and we're two pieces that fit perfectly together." Unknown
•"Who in the world am I? Ah, that's a great puzzle." Lewis Carroll
•"A little piece of heaven."
•"A perfect fit."
•"Together forever."
•"A piece of my heart."
•"Solve the puzzle of Autism."

What's Up and What's Planned

What a busy week. I finished my biggest project so far this year. My goddaughter got married on Valentines Day and I was the photographer and the album maker. I completed a 12 x 12 digital book for them before they returned from their Mardi Gras honeymoon. Unfortunately, their pictures didn't turn out (too many Hurricanes at Pat O'Brien's?). I think the Vintage Romance digital papers and embellishment had a very sophisticated look. They are very pleased.

My Meetup group, North Irving Scrapbook Therapy Club, met on the 19th. The three of us had a good time. I am trying hard to grow this group so we can work on projects together and even find time to have weekend retreats. Sumya, my Pakistani friend, finished a project in record time. She brought yummy somosas. The newest member, Anke from Germany, is a long time scrapbooker. We spent most of the evening sharing stories and getting to know eachother, which is half the fun.

My project for this month will be doing a traditional album using old family pictures taken during my husband's childhood. I hope to have it finished by our anniversary in March.

If you are interested in doing gifts or albums digitally, be sure to visit the CM PhotoCenter site. They also prints pictures in all sizes and archive.

If you want to see all the traditional and digital things Creative Memories offer, the look at my website. Remember, anytime you place an order, my CM ID# 18642738 must be used.

Dallas Winter Wonderland

It snowed for 24 hours in Dallas. I know that's not a really big deal for those who get several feet of snow every year, but I don't remember this much snow in Dallas ever and I've lived hear for 42 years. The picture is of a grassy bush beside our drive way. I took it at 5 am before anything outside moved. I wish I had a video of my white standard poodle trying out the snow. Oh, she didn't want to go outside. I stayed home and watched it all day long. Lovely. Definitely took some pictures to use in my digital books.

Getting Organized

Every New Year I make a resolution to lose weight and get organized. Okay, I'm still overweight, but I am losing. I'm also getting organized. Oh,it is so easy to go to the local office supply and buy folders and labels and boxes and containers. Then, it was even more fun to move stuff from one place to another. I'm talking about paper files and boxes and even filing cabinets. But still, the one thing I keep putting off is organizing all my photos into safe and accessible and secure files.

First, I have to do something with the cabinet full of printed photos I've collected in shoeboxes for years. I bought a scanners. I think it will take about a month to scan them in. I keep putting that chore off. Before I scan them, I need to figure out how I want to organize them. From Creative Memories I bought a Power Sort Box that holds 2600 pictures in a safe, archival quality container with dividers. Within the Power Sort Box are 4 smaller sort boxes (each holds 600 pictures)with dividers.

I realised that I must have a secure place to preserve them after they are scanned. I bought a terabyte (pretty darn big) external hard drive (still in the box). I also bought a large package of DVD (gold ones because they are suppose to last the longest.). Now I'm starting to get paranoid. What if the hard drive fails? What if a have a computer crash before I finish my project?

I've really thought this through. I bought Memory Manager 3.0 from Creative Memories. As I scan my pictures into my computer, I will place them in files on Memory Manager. Then I'll export them to my external hard drive and also send them to Creative Memories to be archived. Only then, will I remove the files from my computer. Now my photos will be available to me online, anytime and anywhere. If something happens to my external hard drive, I can retrieve them from Creative Memories.

Now, the hardest step of all...opening that first shoe box.