March: Currently

listening to the new Fun. CD Some Nights on repeat, especially when I'm crafting.

reading four books but not really enjoying any of them.

feeling very inspired to create stuff with paper.

eating asparagus with almost every dinner I make. Yum!

trying not to think about a certain boy that I really shouldn't be thinking about.

being so super excited that the Hunger Games movie comes out SOON!

needing a hair cut but not really sure I want to go shorter.

losing weight! I am kind of embarrassed to talk about this on my blog, but I've lost 10 pounds so far!

loving Lady Gaga. I watched this video from her Born This Way Foundation launch and I am convinced that she is doing good things in this world.

hoping to win this blog design giveaway from the awesome My Girl Thursday.

creating Project Life pages and loving every second of it. (Last week's pages coming tomorrow!)

Project Life: Week 2

I know it's only my second week, so is it weird to say that this week's spread is my favorite so far? haha! It seemed like these pages came together better and easier this week. I guess that's probably because I was a little more prepared for what to expect. By the end of the week, I was thinking, "ooh, I need more vertical shots for my layout this week!" This was a busy week too, so I had lots to add.

Here are my week 2 pages:

The first page includes:

• my weekly dates.
• picture of me and my Grandma - I had a great time seeing her while she was here and loved having her and my grandpa over at my house for breakfast.
• pictures of me and my friend Jessica. She came to my house to have dinner, talk about Project Life, and show me some digital PL tricks. We had tons of fun and I'm bummed she's moving far away soon! We promised to text each other pictures of our PL weeks every week. (and she needs a blog!!)
• a little journaling about Just Dance 3: my current obsession.
• a picture of me and some of my co-workers (and friends!) celebrating Andrea's 30th birthday (more on that on page 2).
• my weekly song lyric..."In Repair" by John Mayer came on shuffle on my iPod this week and I just knew I had to make it part of my Project Life week. The song kind of describes where I'm at in my love life, and I love that John Mayer came up with the words for how I've been feeling.

Page 2 includes:

• pictures of some of my great-great-great-great grandparents on either side and some information I found out from joining ancestry.com (I'm obsessed!)
• a recipe and pictures of the Jello shots I made for my friend's party. I made 100 of them and it was a very big event in my week, so I had to include a couple shots. But I'm not so sure how my ancestors would feel about sharing a page with the pineapple upside-down cake Jello shots I made (recipe coming soon!).
• a picture of the double-decker London party bus that my friend Andrea rented for her 30th birthday party. It drove us to a couple cool bars in the city and everyone had such a great time.
  
  I especially love this picture that came from that night (and it's included in my first page, but here's a closer look:)

So there it is...I'm all up-to-date with my Project Life blog posts (go me!). I can't wait 'til Sunday so that I can start on week 3!

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind

See my other Project Life pages here.

Project Life: Week 1

I would like to echo the thousands of bloggers that have said this before me and say that I love love love Project Life. I finished my first week last week but hadn't had a chance to photograph it yet. But I took this afternoon off of work to get some daylight photographing time, so here are my first few pages of Project Life! (To learn more about Project Life and to see my cover page, click here.)

Here's my first week's spread:

Here's a close-up of page 1: (You can click the picture to make it even bigger.)

I added in: a butterfly card that I got in the mail from my mom this week; a self-portrait of me at work; some Photoshop work I did to combine two pictures and text to talk about the puzzle I finished at my dad's; pictures of the two mix CDs I made; and some information about my current favorite foods - including a piece of the frozen meal packaging that I wrote my name on to protect it from my co-workers.

I'm going to be adding in the dates of the week in the top right corner of every spread. Here's my first one (I'm using a $5 date stamp that I got at Office Max) :

I added in an 8.5"x11" page to talk about my experience meeting Henry Winkler. I had an 8.5"x6" sheet that I got Henry Winkler to sign when I met him, but that's a hard size to fit in the page protectors that I have. It talks about the event on the back of the card, so I really wanted to be able to show both sides of it and I didn't want to cut it up, so this was a good solution for it. If you look closely you can see the pink machine stitching that I did to keep this all together. Here's the page I added in:

Here's the back of the page, along with my journaling:

The right side of the spread includes: a picture of me and my Dad; information about the awesome new Lady Gaga DVD I bought; my song lyric for the week; the envelope that my mom sent the above butterfly card in (nice because it has my address and her address to remember them by); a picture of my nails that week; and some pictures and a little journaling from my fun night out. Here's the page:

Like I mentioned in my last PL post, I'm doing a song lyric each week to tie the whole book together. This week's lyric was appropriately from the "Happy Days" theme song, since I was singing it all week!

Week 2 is done and photographed, so check back for it later this week! Here's a sneak preview and a picture of my PL helper:

So what do you think of my book so far? Fun, huh?!

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind

Five Favorites Friday: 3.9.12

3 cheers for Friday!! Here are five of my favorite things this week:

1. We all know that I'm obsessed with photo booths, and La Photocabine is a fun way to have a pretend photo booth at home using your webcam. I took these silly shots to test it out. (seen here)

2. I've mentioned how awesome I think Lucky Jackson's art is before, but I finally bought one of her patterns so that I can hopefully make something half as cool as this:

(PS: her hoop from yesterday might be my favorite she's done so far!)

3. This swiss roll ice cream cake looks very complicated to make but the directions are actually pretty simple! And it looks super tasty.

4. Same thing with these cool DIY beaded headbands - look super complicated but when you read the directions they seem do-able!

5. And I will continue to beg my mom every week between now and my far-away wedding day to make me my wedding dress, but if she remains stubborn and still says no when the big day comes, I will let her buy me this dress that I have fallen completely in love with: (seen here)

I was super happy last week when my favorite guy performed on the Ellen show, because I love Ellen Degeneres so much. Here's his performance of the single "I Won't Give Up." (and I actually like his hair in this one! Yay!) If you want to see some cool artwork inspired by Mr. Mraz's lyrics, check out Rinda's blog for her cool art journal pages.

That's it for this week! This weekend will consist of spending more time with my Grandma (she's in town - yay!), playing softball, and helping my friend celebrate her 30th birthday on the double-decker party bus she rented for the occasion! I hope your weekend is amazing!

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind

Blogger Blues

(this picture is from the March photo a day I'm participating in on Instagram. Day 5: a smile)

I'm super happy in real life, but I've got the blogger blues right now.

If you're a blogger, I'm sure you've been through them too.

You know how it goes...you start posts but they just don't really seem good enough.
You feel kind of weird that all these people can learn so much about your life just by reading through your blog.
You feel like no one's reading...blah blah blah.

I think part of it is that I'm just so busy living life lately that I haven't been on the computer as much. Or maybe it's because I'm feeling so creative in other areas (scrapbooking) that I haven't felt much like writing lately.

Anyway, no excuses. But I do apologize if you've missed me on this platform. I'm still around and thinking about the blog, just not posting as often these past couple of weeks.

I hope you all are enjoying your lives as much as I'm enjoying mine right now!

Do you all get the "blogger blues" sometimes too? How do you beat them?

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind

PS: I'm still posting a lot on Instagram, so make sure you follow me on there @CarrieRosalind. Don't have Instagram but want to check out my pics? You can see them all on my Webstagram page.

Lady Gaga Love

I had the pleasure to see Lady Gaga in July 2010 when she came through Phoenix with her Monster Ball tour, and I was completely blown away. I remember leaving the arena and thinking "I can't wait to see that show again on video so that I can fully take it all in."

I missed the HBO special that showed the concert from Madison Square Garden, and was happy to hear when they put it out on DVD. But I don't really watch many DVDs any more (Netflix has completely taken over my TV), so I wasn't really sure I'd get my money's worth for it. I seriously picked it up and put it back down about five times in different stores, and when I went with my Dad to Best Buy last Saturday afternoon, I finally decided that I would treat myself and buy the DVD.

I couldn't wait to watch it when I got home, and I watched it again on Sunday too. I put it on my computer and let it play as I was working on my Project Life week, but it was hard to keep my eyes away from the screen because it's so visually appealing.
I am a huge Lady Gaga fan but I know she's not for everyone. The video below plays at the end of the concert DVD and as soon as I saw it I just knew I had to share it on my blog. Regardless of your feelings about Gaga, the girl has a great voice, and I love her even more for all of her attempts to stop bullying and to make her "Little Monsters" feel loved and special.


Check out this video if you have a minute, and let me know your thoughts on Gaga. Love her or hate her? I promise I won't judge you either way. ;)

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind

Ayyyyyy: Meeting Henry Winkler

Even though Happy Days was on before I was even thought of, I used to catch re-runs of it on Nick at Nite and I always loved it. So when I found out that the Fonz himself, Henry Winkler, was going to be at an event that was being held at my dad's old rehabilitation hospital, I jumped at the chance to go see him speak.

Henry Winkler's mom was a stroke victim and suffered from something my dad also suffers from called upper limb spasticity. Upper limb spasticity is a common effect from stroke or other brain injuries, which causes the arm, wrist and/or fingers to clench up. It can be very uncomfortable for the injured patient and affects the person's quality of life, as it makes it harder to do everyday life things such as getting dressed and doing things around the house.

Botox is often used to decrease the effects of upper limb spasticity, and my dad gets Botox treatments every several months to help with his right arm. The presentation was about 15 minutes of the doctor talking about Botox as a use for upper limb spasticity, and then she turned the mic over to Henry Winkler who talked about his mom's stroke and his association with the Open Arms campaign, and then he opened it up for questions and did Q&A for about 30 minutes. People asked everything from, "do you still keep in touch with the Happy Days crew?" (he is still very close to all of them, especially Ron Howard), to "can you do the famous Fonzie impression?" (he did it!)

After that, we had the chance to snap this quick picture with him and get his autograph. I was a little disappointed we didn't get to interact with him more, but he was being swarmed by tons of people!

My dad and I had a great time, and I think it's really cool that Henry Winkler is bringing publicity to this cause.

I know that my Storytelling Sunday posts are starting to look like "Celebrity Sunday" posts, but I promise I only have a couple left. ;) Enjoy your Sunday!

xoxo,
Carrie Rosalind