Scoping Update

I haven't done a scoping update in a while and wanted to give you a quick one. I passed my last class and have moved on to the second to the last class which is the intense computer training. So far, so good. I have had quite a bit of experience in this program before, but I am learning a lot of new things. I am on chapter three of twenty and really hoping to finish it by the end of this month. I should probably be working on it instead of blogging, but you know how it is, why work on something hard when you work on something fun! O.k. o.k. I'm going!

Scoping Update

I am way behind in posting once again. Here is a little scoping update. I have finished with my class on Transcript Production. Got a B on the final. Was hoping for an A, but no dice. On to my class on How To Be A Professional Scopist. I am really enjoying this one so far. I have completed six of the ten lessons and am hoping to be done by this weekend if I can get the Peanut well enough to work on it. She has got a touch of the croup. I hate that stuff. She sounds like a little barking seal. After this class I only have two more classes left and then I am finished. Yay! My boss is going to send me some practice files to try my hand at. Hopefully I will do an o.k. job on them!

Craziness

Craziness!!!! I know.... No blogging for like a week straight. What up dog? Well, lots actually. The Peanut started Little League this last week and what fun!!!! The Peanut is only one of two girls on her team and she (to my surprise) is hustling and paying attention more than the boys out there. Most of the boys had even a few tears shed, but the Peanut, she just went out and had a great time playing. I think being in soccer this year really helped. It always amazes me how quickly kids can make friends with other kids. Adults can't even hold a small conversation with a stranger and kids just gather and in less than five minutes they have a game going and chatting it up with the other kids. Adults should take note.

On the craft front: The Sac Craft Mafia meeting was fabulous. It was a pretty small group due to a lot of the rampant illness flying around Sac town, but it was fun. I told you about our two challenges that we had. One, was to make a gavel for our current president Amy. Our Craft Mafia colors are pink and black so I definetly wanted to try to incorporate that into the challenge. I wanted to make it as crafty as possible so I headed to Michaels (I know I said that I was supposed to stay out of there, but it was for club business, so it was allowed) and picked up a few small wooden pots and a wooden thread spool. Painted them, super glued them together, added some ribbon and embellished with my favorite tool in the whole world - a Sharpee marker! It came out pretty cute. I am really not into to many wood crafts, but it came out o.k. I was surprised when they asked if anyone did the gavel challenge and I raised my hand, but nobody else did! Mine was the only one there and everybody said it turned out cute so I was pleased. Our second challenge of the night was not really a challenge, but more of a swap, a Valentine swap. It could be a card or a favor. Now, I really love anything paper, and my first reaction was to do a fantastic card, but I decided instead to do one of my paper topiaries on a small scale. I have made a few of these now, all of them rather large. They usually take me about three days to complete, but because this one was so small, I completed it in just one day. It came out cute. I still tried to use pink and black and of course hearts, its for Valentines Day. Here are a few pics. We chose names and swapped our items, so much fun. Guess what I got............. I got the most fabulous pair of heart earrings made by Craft Mafia sister Lorain of Rain's Embellishments: http://www.myspace.com/rainsembellishments & http://www.rainsembellishments.etsy.com/. Here is a pic. Aren't they awesome? Please check out her sites. She is one very talented jewelry designer! Thank you Rain!!!!!! I have worn them almost everyday since. Especially in the spirit of Valentines Day! Speaking of jewelry, the hubby gave me a huge surprise Valentines morning - a beautiful gold heart necklace with lots of bling. Wow! We usually just exchange cards with flowers or a coffee from Starbucks which I love, so you can imagine my surprise when I saw a little box next to my card. Thank you cute husband of mine!

On the scoping front: I finished my final, yea!!!!!!!!! And, I got a B. I was a little disappointed because the two questions that I missed, I second guessed myself and should have gone with my gut. I always do that on tests. But, I passed, and that is the most important thing. I already began the next class which is Transcript Production. I have been producing transcripts for reporters for over five years now so I thought this section would be a breeze, but so far, not the case. Its hard when you have to learn a different style of doing things than you are used to. So only nine chapters in this one. Hopefully, I will have it wiped out in two weeks or so.

On the personal front: I did it, I went out and chopped my hair. I have to do this every now and then. It makes me feel like I am a completely new person every time I cut my hair. My first idea was to cut it and give it either to Locks of Love or to the Pantene program for women with breast cancer, but no dice. I guess that I can't have color treated hair. It has to be au natural in order to donate, and sadly enough, I have to color mine because of my quickly becoming evident, premature graying. I know, I am only 31, but it is coming in fast and furious thanks to my great gene pool. I was bummed not to donate my hair. It seems like such a waste. I had close to nine inches taken off. Wow! So here are my before and after pics. None of them are great pics of me. It could be the light, and my lack of camera intelligence and the fact that I held the camera up and took it myself, but at least you get the idea. I brought in a picture of Jenny McCarthy. I covet her hairstyle. Isabel over at our local Ulta in Birdcage on Sunrise in Citrus Heights did a fantastic job on my cut. I have had several bobs, but this one is so nice because she thinned it out a ton so I don't look like my head exploded. Thank you Isabel at Ulta. Go visit her she is fantastic!

On the kiddo front: We finally made it to see our friends in Redding this weekend. Their daughter was turning the big 03 and the party was at a jumphouse place. Kids love it. Actually, the husband had more fun than the kids and even broke out into a full blown sweat. I was loosing my pants climbing under the poofy things on the obstacle course. So much fun. The party theme was Backyardigans. One of our daughters' fave cartoons. Here are the party masks that they passed out as favors.

We tried to avoid it, but its here, the Peanut has caught the coughing virus that is going around. I was hoping it was just hayfever, but the poor kid hasn't stopped coughing all week. I finally took her to the doctor today and they confirmed it wasn't anything to worry about. She hasn't run a fever but her chest and her throat are killing her. We sat on the couch most of the day and drank 7-up and watched about a billion Sponge Bob episodes On Demand(Thank You Comcast!!!) and then the movie Deck the Halls. Too cute. I love Danny DeVito.

O.k. so that is the week in a nut shell. On to the next one. I am really glad that tomorrow is a holiday and the office is closed and the hubby is off. I need a holiday! P.S. I am pretty sure that my spell check is not working. I know that my spelling can't be that fantastic that I don't have any misspelled words in my post, but when I hit the button nothing happens so bear with me.

Folk Art - A love of mine!

O.k. , so I procrastinated. I didn't get my paintings on etsy or on my blog last night. So tonight I am taking tons of pictures (because we know what a whiz I am with a camera; see previous posts) just to get a good shot. I experimented with lighting, flash, no flash, guides for the close-up. You can see the color difference in the two pictures. Crazy, huh, or just my bad photography. I am just not good at this stuff. So I finally get a couple of semi-decent shots and I go to load them on etsy and I continually get an error message of "ERROR SAVED IMAGE." What the heck does that mean? I tried to troubleshoot it, and after a half an hour of messing with it and consulting a "not so helpful" help menu. I gave up--but just for tonight. I will try listing them again tomorrow. Did I say that I even resized them but, no go. So here are my two folk art paintings. I love painting. I have been painting since I was a kid and many of you might think, "They look like they were done by a kid," but that is my love of folk art. I have never been into the modern or the realistic. I love folk art because it really shows each artists individuality and fun in their paintings. Folk art is always so whimsical and unpredictable. At least, that is my take on it. I have been a collector of folk art for quite some time now and have an ever expanding collection of items hanging on my walls. My all time favorite is actually hanging in my bathroom. I know, a weird place, but it fits in there. It is actually a piece that was made with old pieces of barn wood collaged together to make a great American flag. It was super expensive, but I just had to have it and bought it for myself pre-kids, pre-husband. I will always treasure it! These two pieces that I painted were of two things that I can't live without. The first one is crows, yep, crows, they are my favorite. I just love those big happy birds. They have such unique personalities and I always get a little smile when I see one on a walk in our front yard. This crow in my painting is quite the Diva. She has a silver princess crown and holds a bag in her beak from the jewelry store Tiffany's. My second painting is entitled Mamas Cookin, and it speaks for itself. Big Mama is stirring up her biscuit dough in a green bowl while wearing her favorite red and orange polka-dot dress and white utilitarian apron. How chic! This painting was inspired by all the women in my family who have a love of food and cooking for their families. If you know my family, you would know that most every gathering revolves around the meals and snacks.

So here is a couple of pics to keep you busy till I get them up in my etsy shop.

On another note, I received my final for my Medical Terminology class and it is rather easy and short, a nice change from the other two finals that I had to take in the last three months. I will let you know what my grade is soon. Hopefully good. I plan on starting my scoping business as soon as I possibly can. My friend Ruth has a few juicy cases she is working on and we talked about me scoping them. Yay!

Just a Quickie!

Just a quickie update while I have a brief moment.

I finished the last quiz in my Medical Terminology Class! Yeah!!!!!!! Just waiting to recieve the final exam and I am on to my transcript production class. I have been producing transcripts for the past five years so hopefully this one will be a quick class, but you never know.

I just updated my flickr account because it was getting oldy and moldy with no pics in there. Here it is:
www.flickr.com/photos/pinkpetuniadesigns/

I am working on two very fun crafty projects for the Craft Mafia meeting this week. I will post photos both on flickr and the blog after the meeting because they are a super secret surprise. We had two challenges for this next meeting. One, to make a gavel for our current president Amy and two, to make a Valentine card or favor. Too much fun. Can't wait to show you.

Paintings will be on my etsy shop as well as my flickr account tonight and I am working on two new ones that I will hopefully finish by next week.

I am having one of those days where I am tying up a bunch of loose ends that I should have gotten to like a month ago. I am feeling very accomplished today in all of my organization. Although, I just realized I have been so busy today I didn't even think about making dinner yet and its now almost 4 pm. Gotta go. Yeah for me in all my organization!

I finally finished them

O.k. so maybe the small details are not complete. I just finished my monk's cloth purses. Four that I made and 1 that my friend Ruth made. I don't think that I will attempt these again. The material keeps wanting to snag and sometimes my sewing machine catches and pulls in a thread. But nonetheless, they are done except for a few ribbons to attach. Yeah! My next project to finish is my Halloween coasters. I use a gel-medium transfer process that I learned about a few years back. The results are awesome. The ink actually sinks into the coasters. So the result is a nice flat surface unlike when you decopauge something. I was just looking at etsy.com yesterday for a price point for these. Nobody had the gel medium process that I could see. They were all decopauged. So, I will have to think about it. I am excited to start these because as much as I love to sew I love my paper projects even more. Ahh the smell of a paper store. It is enough to send me straight to heaven. So, I am drinking my vanilla latte and pondering whether or not I should clean up the house or study. I have a rather large test that I am taking Sunday afternoon for an online school that I have been attending. It is http://www.scopeschool.com/. I got involved in this because I have been running a court reporting business for my friend and boss Ruth for the past five years. Scoping is a great business to get involved with. This punctuation test is looming over me so I guess I will go and study. Yuck!