One Winter evening...

Alexxis snuggling with her Papa while watching Noggin.

Getting her "ducks" in a row...

Her shoes all lined up with ours. How cute, is that?

LOL! What can I say? Except she gets it honestly!

Reaching some of my personal goals...

I've finally reached my weight loss goal! {and a little more than I intended to lose.} I began my weight loss journey on Thanksgiving 2009 and by changing my eating habits to smaller portions, eliminating a lot of processed foods, and increasing my activity the weight began coming off. By June of 2010, the majority of my clothes were literally falling off of me!
However, I toughed it out, knowing that I wanted to lose more, I resisted shopping for awhile. And here I am.... approximately 40-45 lbs. lighter, feeling healthier than I've felt in quite some, weighing in at 113 pounds. Go, me!!! :)

My next goal: Toning up!

Inspiration from Coastal Living magazine...

I love Matt's illustrations and maps in the recent issues of Coastal Living magazine, so I decided to sketch one of my own, with my own memories. I'll be adding this to one of those filler pages that I'll be placing within the album.

Creative News...

I'm continuing to work on this altered travel album using a 4x6 photo album from Hobby Lobby. It has been a lot of fun creating those small photo mats and using up a lot of duplicate photographs to create us a travel album. We've certainly been blessed with opportunities to explore our home state of Ohio, neighboring states, and some longer road trips.

Here are a few of the pages I've created so far in this on-going project.

Don and I at Old Man's Cave in Hocking Hills area of Ohio.

Don, while we attending the Columbus, Ohio ArtFest.


Pieces, parts, and pages. You can tell the album was filled with white pages when I began in this photograph.

The inside cover of our album and the post-bound binding. I'll be inserting more pages and the journey will continue as long as the Good Lord is willing!

I'm so missing those palm trees, sunshine, and 70-80 degree temps. The photograph is of the Indian River, located near Ft. Pierce/Jenson Beach area of Florida. It is a salt-water river and contains all the same types of fish and crab that the ocean does. Yep, even Man-O-Wars and Jellyfish. It was wonderful seeing the area that my dd, Amber had previously moved to before returning to Ohio after Hurricane Frances, but sad to see some to the destruction and devastion left behind, like some of the beautiful beach homes that are no longer structurally sound. It certainly makes you appreciative of what you have!

And I loved our lunch at Mulligan's, where Alexxis played in the sand with her sand bucket; drinking rum runners while watching the sunset on the jetty! Good times! Good memories!

Remind me again, why I traded in that all that sun, sand, and surf for all this

snow, sniffles, and sneezes???? And just as we beginning bailing out from one winter storm, another 4-6" is predicted in the next two days!

Off to the stock-up at the grocery store, and Yes! I buying chocolate!

The Perfect Cure for the Winter blues...