Amanda Rose blog

*tear

I'm sad to have to wave goodbye to this much needed ten days.

I will not be getting a wide spread of time like this again until Summer.
Summer vacation is 60 work days away.
Yes, I counted.

I know that is not a tremendous amount of time, but looking at it from the start, it is.

But here we are, teachers: in the home stretch.

I hope the warmer weather helps.
I hope the promise of summer at the end of this home stretch helps.
I hope the checkpoints of happiness (like Jimmy Fallon one month from today) come quickly, and feel lengthy.

I'll be bloggin' my way through it all here.  
I'm aiming to get through these next 3 months with positivity and productivity.

Love you, Spring Break. Miss you already.

This guy's goin' to be more upset than me, I think.

sharpies + Easter eggs

Today is Good Friday for all who celebrate, and I'm coming to you today with my 'goods' from last night's egg decorating extravaganza.  My cousin, Claudia is with us for the Easter weekend, and when she comes, we get crafty.

Okay, people, I thought I had hit the DIY jackpot!  I had the idea to Mister Huey's mist a hardboiled egg, and sort of monogram them with a colorful marbled-misty look.  Why hadn't anyone pinned this!, I thought.  It's easy. It's fun. It'll be so pretty.  All sounded great...in theory.

Sadly, the idea flopped:

The mist did not stick properly. It was wet and all over the place.  Even with dry-time, it didn't adhere to the shell.  Yeah.  So that's why nobody pinned it.

On to Plan B! ...

...and some interesting creations were made...  

You know me and my polka dots. ;)

When you're a cat-mama, I instagrammed, you want to drawn your babies everywhere.

Claude did an awesome job of springin' up her egg and her nails.

I kept looking for ways I could use the letter stickers.
This thing: ~ reminded me of eyebrows. 

...and an asterisk* for a flower in her hair

This 'dietician' egg was my mom's bright idea. (deep sigh)
My sister is studying to be a dietician and was literally upstairs locked in her room studying, so to honor her and 'include' her we made a dietician egg:
one that would say, "STOP! Eggs are high in cholesterol."

My mom insisted we sign it "-Dietician".

------------------------------------

Then, of course, you have your
Pop Culture easter eggs:

Taylor Swift and 1D eggs.  Carefully and beautiful sharpied by the Claude-myster.

AND...

...last, but not least,
my personal favorite egg of the night...

I used the two cracks as eye-sockets.

Season III Finale Sunday. OMG. OMG.

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I have to say that these are prob not the BEST Easter eggies I've ever made, but still it was a lot of fun.  Also, the scene reminded me of back in mid-October when Claude was over and we were doing the same thing in the same spot, but with acrylic paint and pumpkins.

In fact, the whole thing was highly reminiscent of pumpkin painting.  Isn't that funny? It seems every 6 months we humans need to habitually play with our food.  I love that.

Have a happy Friday, readers & peepers!

I'm doing March's edition of 'Day in the Life' today.
Come back soom to see how that pans out in the near future.

See past Easter egg creations here(2011) and here(2010).

a Day in the Life | 2.28.2013

Thursday I participated in Ali Edwards' documenting exercise of capturing a 'day in the life' of yourself. 

I'm not usually one to 'exact replica' another's style of doing something.  Usually I'm more of a 'oh-that's-cool-I'm-inspired-How-can-I-make-that-more-my-style' kind of crafter, but when I saw Ali's January DayintheLife insert, I was floored.  It was so beautiful and appealed to the designer/life-artist in me more than I can describe, so I really wanted to give it a shot JUST LIKE SHE DID IT.

I purchased and downloaded Ali's templates...HERE and HERE.
I printed her recording sheet which helped me track my day...HERE.
I woke up Thursday excited for the project, and I did it.

It was a heck of a good time.

I love the end result:

Some of the happenings from the morning:

...and the highlights from the afternoon and evening:

Here's how I fit it into the |week 9| spread of my Project Life album.  

I strongly recommend giving the next 'Day in the Life' a try.  

I'm definitely going to give it another go, and it will be interesting to compare my day in March to this day from February, especially since my 'Day in the Life' March edition is going to take place during Spring Break off from teacher work.  Woo hoo! How much more exciting it might be! (OR NOT! Pajamas all day, anyone?)  Haa haa!  We'll see!

Have a happy Sunday in the life!

;)

my new favorite (cat) sweater

I found in EXISTENCE this sweater that IS my little boy cat, Alejandro, on a sweater.  
How could I NOT buy it.  Seriously.  HOW?!?!

...and the back?!  ...with the cute kitty pads?!  ...probably my favorite part. 

I wore it yesterday to ambitiously take a shopping trip with my sis until I
put my coat on and said, "This ain't happenin'."

I caught a bug, and have been sneezing/blowing snots and napping all of yesterday.

Besides these quick photos taken in my backyard, a McDonald's run, and The Walking Dead,
yesterday was a total wash.

Felt needed.

Have a happy Monday!

(It will be for me.  No work today.)

the heart

It's always been my favorite shape, my choice doodle.

It's been showing up a lot lately -- in my mind, at Target, during my Saturday morning crafting, on food, and therefore in my instagram feed.

I don't know if it's because of Valentine's Day (although that helps) or something more than that.

Every time I look at it, it fills a bit of the empty inside; just the sight of it helps heal. 
(That's the graphic nerd in me.)

I miss him more and more each day and teacher work is drowning me, but there's a heart on my sweater, so it'll be alright.

Where has this fun shape been showing up in your life?

P.S. -- I'm aware there's no heart shape in the pic above with my kitty boop, but she's just a mush ball of love, so she counts...plus, my nails are pink. ;)

a week ago, when my GRAMS was in town

A large bulk of my brood was over to celebrate my Gramsy-pie turning 80.  It was a lot of fun, as you can see in the pics above.

Her birthday cake wish was that we'd all be doing the same thing ten years from now, when she turns 90. 

I couldn't agree more.

Happy Saturday, lovie bops!

xOxO,

short 6-second looping video instagrams -- that's Vine

So, probably like you, I've been seeing a bunch of teal & grey Vine profiles flashing through my instagram feed, and although I was initially hesitant to go check out the 'latest trend', I still wanted to inform myself as to what is this 'Vine' people speak of.

I found out: It's a dummy-proof way to record second-long clips of video and post it for all to see.

I think as a blogger and scrapbooker and life crafter, whose personal thrill it is to MAKE ART OF LIFE, Vine naturally excites me.  ...and GO FIGURE!  I find out about this app the DAY my GRAMS LEAVES after her long 80th Birthday weekend of fun, family, and partying! Jeez!

That's all for now.  Oh that, and PREPARE.  Prepare for the enormous amount of hoopla about this app...I guess starting here. Haa haa!

app info HERE

Bri's take on the Vine app HERE

my Vine profile looks like THiS 

and

my first Vine post is (of course!) me singing karaoke...HERE

 

♥ ♥ ♥
Have fun, readers & peepers!

xOxO,

another vid...a stamp of mine being stamped on Vine :)

and capturing my soup for lunch today on Vine

...this could get addicting

Grams arrived...with only one shoe...

Yep.

Leave it to my grandma to arrive with a story.

My Aunt Laura picked up my grandma from the airport and Grams didn't realize until they drove out of the arrival gates that she was missing a shoe.  She didn't feel it NOT on her foot!  My cousin and Grams were scrambling to look for this shoe in the car, and it was no where to be found. Supposedly, she showed up at my house with one bare foot in 15-degree weather! Haa haa! OMG!

I'm so excited for these next three days with Grams!  I have to practice and perfect my rendition of "Cant Take My Eyes Off of You" with our changed lyrics...(see here)...for tomorrow's festivies.  

Today will consist of cleaning and cooking and errands and good things.  

I'll see you when I see you.

xOxO,

a poem featuring my Grams

Grams's Floridan condo

time for the post about...

Readers and peepers of this here blog, I professed at the beginning of this month that I wanted to MAKE JANUARY AWESOME.  There are a number of strategically planned ways I am going to make sure this happens, and one most definite way is with the new KARAOKE system Christmas vacay brought with it.

It's actually far surpassed my expectations of awesomeness.

...and it's so easy to set up:

I cannot express in enough words how much fun and excitement this system has brought to the first few weeks of this year.  I first came across this system at Tomas's extended family's house two Christmases ago (see here) and I knew I had to incorporate it into my world.

With my Grandma's 80th Birthday being celebrated this coming weekend at our house, you can betcha by golly that the KARAOKE will suck our guests into its vortex. Yep.  That's what I decided it does. No matter who you are or how much you love/hate your voice, to sing, karaoke, etc. YOU WILL SUCCUMB TO THIS KARAOKE SYSTEM'S MAGIC VORTEX OF AWESOMENESS. 

Case in point was yesterday, at the Zampelli house, with my friend, Elisa.  She has a very high-pitched, nasally (dare I say) Fran Drescher Queens, NY voice and she was so closed off to the idea of karaoke.

"I'll watch you girls sing," she declared.

I knew the karaoke's vortex would pull her and there would be no escape.  FOUR HOURS LATER...and a whole ABBA album of karaoke-singing later, I was right. ;)

Here ae some shots of my awesome January Sunday:

All this morning my mom and I were in awe that we sang for four hours straight. 

"I can't believe we got nothing done yesterday," my mom's been saying.

...and you know what?! Thank God.  We both needed a day of nothing, of stress-relief, of relax.

I needed a day with the girls, a day with wine, a day with unbridled dancing and singing, a day of

laughing and more laughing, and a day of pure silly.

Thankful for it yesterday.

Thankful for this awesome karaoke system.

It's a constant in a time when a lot of my world is changing.

It makes sense to me in a time that's hella confusing.
 

Yay.

I have so many favorite songs to karaoke but some are:

"Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now" by Starship

anything by Heart

Madonna's "Cherish"

"Heaven is a Place On Earth" by Belinda Carlisle

Janet Jackson's "Again"

...and my big hit from yesterday: "Baby Got Back" ...I do a mean Sir Mix A Lot ;)

 

to buy a system of your very own, visit here

around here / first week of 2013

Around this house this past first week of January...

...there was lots of coffee drank.  Like, lots.

...there was crisp, clear winter outtings in the backyard,
and squirrel-watching from the warm inside.

...I enjoyed some down time Project Life-ing,
creating these pages, readying for 2013.

...there was TONS of teacher To-Dos,
as per usual this time of year.

...Christmas was officially packed away and not a shred
of evidence still remains that it was ever here.
It went came and went so quickly, right?

...the Wii remote has been attached to my hip since
getting the ZUMBA Core Fitness 'game'. 

...there's been lots of solo time.  I spent the first Saturday night of the
year with John Krasinski & Mya Rudolph.

...had a Monday morning that was...well...Monday morning...and
all my little Alejandro wanted was for his mommy
to stay home from work.
He tries 'belly-up' to convince me.

...there was SO MUCH KARAOKE SINGING! I will
elaborate in the near future, but it's been
all kinds of awesome which I guess
ties in with this motive.

Finally, late night photo-editing is
how I've been ending my days.

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -

I predict the next 3+ weeks of January will be made up of much of the same things.

Happy Tuesday, lovies!