...order some food storage.

"The best food storage is not in welfare grain elevators but in sealed cans and bottles in the homes of our people. What a gratifying thing it is to see cans of wheat and rice and beans under the beds or in the pantries of women who have taken welfare responsibility into their own hands." - Gordon B. Hinckley

So, I took the plunge. I ordered a starter amount of food storage. It won't be here for months. It's coming on a big-rig in late summer/early fall. When it comes, we go down to meet it and help unload, divide, and gather up our goods. I hear it's a fun event.

In the mean time, I'm looking forward to the May case lot sales at the commissary! Can I just say once again that I love our military benefits...

How are my food storage buddies doing?

...update.

'Just a quick note to tell y'all that I mailed the screenprinted bandannas and flags for the 10K yesterday afternoon. They should arrive in about 6 days.

...think about design.

I follow the North Temple blog that had an excellent post recently on design. It's titled, "Bring Up a Design in the Way It Should Go." The post talks about how we designers have the urge to treat a design as "our baby." Sometimes we go so far as spoiling the baby by doing too much unnecessary frills or forgetting our goals/audience. I've found this to be true in my own work. Inspiration may feel like our ideas should flow unrestrained. However, good design is disciplined. I think we become good designers when we learn to direct the flow of inspiration in our creative process.


My Photoshop is on the fritz, so this is a page from my old college sketchbook when I was in a lower level design course.

...screenprint.

My hubby and I are showing our support for his sisters running a 10K by screenprinting. They are running in the Hospital Hill Run in KC to raise money/awareness for Pancreatic Cancer Action Network. You can check out all the info at the team website: http://www.firstgiving.com/daddygirls. We live far away, so we are printing up some bandannas for the team and a bunch of fun flags for the supporters in the crowd. It's an in-house job. We are doing it all ourselves from design to print. Lucy is our model today.


With all these flags laid out to dry, Andy Warhol's work comes to mind...

GO, DADDY'S GIRLS!!!

...motivate!

So, I like to give myself little rewards associated to goals. I'm thinking this could work on starting the food storage. Okay, food storage buddies, what do you think? Maybe we should think of a reward for getting ourselves to one month, then two, then three months of storage, etc. Any ideas?

...start food storage.

So, I've been wanting to start food storage for a while. We've been picking up a few extra things when we go shopping, but nothing as big as a 3 month supply. Recently, I found a cute website where some young moms have gotten together to make food storage fun. They have lots of great ideas that they share for free. I really like the idea and their blogs and new website, so I added their button to my blog. Check it out.

I'm also looking for a food storage buddy. You know, like a workout buddy where you help each other keep motivated. Anyone want to be my food storage buddy?

...leave.

When you take time off in the military, it's called "leave." James decided to use some of his accumulated days for a short vacation. We aren't going anywhere special. We just plan to hang out close to home for the most part. In honor of his leave time starting at noon yesterday, I made a silly lunch. It kinda has a Hawaiian theme. The picture isn't great. Can make out the pineapple shaped Rice Krispie treat? I used food coloring to make the green stem/leaves and drizzled chocolate to make it look more like a pineapple. I'm sure Martha Stewart wouldn't be impressed, but it tasted good!

...flatten.

So, there are no longer tulip trees near my apartment. The petals have flattened. They are still nice dogwood blossoms...

...see trees bloom tulips!

I'm not kidding. That's what it looked like to me this morning. This tree was blooming tulips...or so I thought. A closer look told me that they were just dogwood blooms cupping open. But you tell me what you think. Don't they look like tree tulips?













This is how the blossoms open:




Here is what they will look like when the petals flatten:

...start at a young age.

'Got more pictures from Mom and thought I'd share this one:


Chances are, you were not the first to ever seen this mischievous look from me. I started all that annoying playfulness at a young age!

BTW, Mom thinks that is a shoelace in my teeth.

How cute am I?!

If you are wearing shoes with laces, you'd better consider agreeing that I was simply adorable... ;)

...mourn.

My uncle passed away last night. I'm comforted by the belief that he is now with my cousin who died young from cancer. Besides being my uncle, he was a WWII vet. So, I fly this rose flag on my blog in his memory.

...scrap Lucy!

It dawned on me that Lucy fans will be missing out if they don't swing by my new Digital Art Journal Gallery blog to see the scrapbook page I made starring our favorite canine.

Here's a preview:

So, click on over to the 4.3.2009 post to see Miss Lu'.

...rock a polyester mini!

You know you are a child of the 70's when...

...you think yarn is a fashionable hair accessory.

Thanks to my Mom for sending me some fun, old pictures!

...save the screws!

Okay. So I'm a little crazy. But I'll tell you what is really crazy--throwing away 10 pounds of good fasteners! I was walking Lucy this morning when we discovered that someone had decided to throw away a bunch of perfectly good drywall screws and other nuts, bolts, and washers. What were they thinking? Well, I should give them some credit because they were put in a plastic bucket outside of the dumpster so that anyone could retrieve them. And that's exactly what I did. I took them inside and rinsed them in warm water--because the bucket was a little dirty and it had been raining. Then I sorted them out on a big towel and weighed them for fun. I will take them down to the local Habitat for Humanity resale store. After seeing a friend benefit from building a Habitat for Humanity house, I know better than to let these just get tossed in the trash!

Come on, people.

Save the screws!

...add a digital art blog!

I've created a digital art blog called "01 Digital Art Journal Gallery." It's been something I've been thinking about doing for a while. In college, I started a visual journal. Like most of my journals, I quit it early.

(I used the visual journal in my title graphic for the new blog.)

The idea has lingered with me for years. I feel the itch to create often. So, now I will post my creations in my virtual gallery for all to see. Hop on over to the new blog if you dare to dive into my digital world. I make no promises on how frequent the posts will be. Inspiration often flows in spurts...