golden.

one of james' catch phrases is "you're golden." like when i'm driving and i ask if i am going to make it around something or whatever... well i think i used to say it before, but i say it a lot more now. [that doesn't really have anything to do with this post... just an interesting little tie into the title.]

i started this last night too, but i didn't finish it. it was originally for a challenge, but it required two photos and at 1:30am i didn't have two photos. So i finished it up today without really doing the challenge since it was past the deadline anyway. You will probably recognize the photo as one of our san francisco photos. the big huge [and i'm sure really important?] windmill from golden gate park is behind us. i really like the scalloped bazzill cardstock. i'm going to have to get some more of that. i was apprehensive because i scrap 8.5x11 and it only comes in 12x12 [well at my local scrap store anyway] but i think that cutting it and leaving two blunt edges gives a fun effect too. i am running low on those heidi swapp chipboard alphas... i wonder if i can get them somewhere because i think they are one of my favorite products. self-adhesive and just super fun and easy to use. [unlike that stock of ghost letters that i have and always struggle with.]

i should update on my nanny/tutoring yesterday also. it was fun. aubrielle didn't bring her math book home... so i helped her get her history done and tried to get an idea of what she is doing in math. then i helped elijah with his math, spelling, and reading. he's pretty smart, but he gets distracted easily and doesn't like to stay on task very much... so i just have to be patient with him and get him going. caleb was messing with the poor dog, but i didn't know what to do about it, and ethany wanted my attention quite a bit. she likes to be held and when you try to put her down, she will throw a fit. so i have a feeling i will build my arm muscles by holding her. :]

anyway, james and i made a deal that we are not eating out this week. we usually eat out for basically every meal. so it's my night to cook and i better go to the store and figure something out like pronto!

create.

here's a little something i made tonight. for a challenge to use hearts and doodle. my sister and i both have the strangest looks on our faces. ok... i guess mine isn't that strange, but maybe just crazy. i think i still make that face today. :]

snow. board.

i just realized that i haven't posted about my snowboarding day yet. i only have this one photo and it's from my sister. [i didn't remember to take my camera with me. ahh well. next time.] well this is the whole group. a few people decided not to come at the last minute. it happens.

i had lots of fun. i made james stay with me and help me a bunch. :] his roommate said, "dang. he must really like you because he never wants to teach anyone." but i let him go off on his own for a while too. i had to get good enough to where i could beat him part way down the hill to where the park is set up so i could watch him do his jumps and whatnot. [ok i had a major head start, but i still had a limited amount of time to get down there.] i am so terribly like a mom! i got scared everytime he went off a jump or did any trick. i don't know anything about the names of things, but i did see him do a 540. [i hope that is what it's called.] i was freaking out and his roommate again said "i don't think you know how good your boyfriend is." haha.

today i have been so sore all day. my legs and butt hurt so much. i'm not able to walk normally and james kept making fun of me. nice.

my sister did pretty good too. neither of us are very good at getting off the lift, but we made one run totally alone and somehow we managed to get off. [and make it down the mountain!]

tonight james and i had photography. we made photograms. pretty fun. james and i had been kind of arguing all weekend about whether or not his idea would work for a photogram. well it did. so i lost that one. :-/ haha. now we have to shoot a whole roll of film by wednesday just to play with our cameras and figure out how to work with all the settings. our professor didn't give us any specific assignment, just anything we want to shoot. then wednesday we will learn how to develop our negatives. eeek! i am so excited. james was making fun of me tonight because i've been reading my photography book a lot and my molecular bio book is still in the wrapping. yeah. i know. it's terrible. but i can't help it.

ok. well i need to work on some stuff for lab tomorrow. i also start my tutoing job tomorrow. i hope it goes well!

sitting.

i am waiting for some stickles to dry so i can scan and post my last layout from today. i was totally supposed to spend all day today getting myself organized for school because i spent the whole week last week feeling unorganized. well i didn't do anything remotely school related. oh well.

in other news:

-tomorrow i am going snowboarding with james. lots of other people are coming too... james' roommate, my sister [for her first time], her boyfriend-type [ha], and three or four of her friends. i am excited, but i know i will be so sore on monday. i am going to try to get some photos this time.

-last night james and i re-arranged my furniture in my bedroom. we both agreed it's better this way. more cozy and more like a bedroom. my bed used to be under my window, which i liked the idea of, which is why i moved it there when i moved in two years ago. this winter though, the weather has been especially cold here and i've noticed that even with two comforters i am still freezing at night. now my desk is under my window. james said "so you can open the window and look out at the nice day and blah de blah de blah." haha. he cracks me up. oh... when we were moving my bookcase, he was like "amy, you have to lift it up!" and i was like "i am lifting it!!" it made us both laugh. [and then he moved it on his own. ha.]

-i don't like people who are "one-uppers" at all. i hope i never turn into someone like that. i mean... i am all for adding to a conversation and sharing things about yourself, but i don't think it's necessary to constantly have some remark about any little thing someone has said and add how much better you are or how much cooler you are because you've done this or seen that. bleck to you.

-i am going to start my nanny/tutoring job this week. yeah, i just found out today that it will include tutoring the 7th grader in math. [time to remember how to do things without my calculator!] i'm also going to help one of the boys with his reading. it's just going to be tuesdays and thursdays for a couple hours. so i am excited and totally in need of the extra cash these days.

-james and i saw a movie with yenh and joey last weekend. i don't know if i mentioned it. we saw children of men. it was ok. i hated the ending and for the most part, it was just kind of depressing. there were some parts that were really funny to the four of us though. i don't think they were intended to be funny, but we found them laughable.

-the stickles has dried. i am going to go scan and post this layout, and also i re-did the layout of andrew and i... so i'll post that too. look below if you are interested.

scrap.

today there is this little event on twopeasinabucket.com with tons of challenges and prizes and stuff. so i am trying to do a couple of them. i am going to post my layouts here [in this post] as i make them. partly because i want to post them and partly because this is the easiest way to resize them. :]

this first one was for an embellishment challenge. i had fun just randomly adding things and not thinking too much about what i was doing. that is so nice once in a while.

this next one was for a challange to use the creating keepsakes random challenge generator. i didn't even know that the generator existed, but i will probably use it more often now if i am struggling to figure out what to add to my pages. it's a crappy photo, but i love the content of it. :]

next, when i was going to post that second one, i saw this challenge had just been posted and ended in 50 minutes. i am a slow scrapper, so generally that is not enough time... but i decided to try to just put something together. the challenge was to use only cardstock, fabric, staples, and stamps... so that really limited me and made it easier to get it done so soon. i've had a couple of these fabric samples that i picked up a while ago and haven't used sitting on my messy desk plus random photos everywhere, so i picked the blue fabric [knowing already that i wanted the red for later.] and this old photo of andrew and me and got that first page done in about 20 minutes.
ack. but i had to re-do it. i don't know. it was just bothering me. it wasn't what i wanted it to be, so i fixed it and added my journaling and now i'm super happy with it. :] oh and it really is 8.5x11 but my scanner does this thing where it automatically crops whatever it scans and for some reason, it doesn't seem to think that the other inch or so on the right side is important. it's just white, so after 10 scans and trying to trick it with various things, i gave up. :-/

this one is my last one for the day. it is for a monochromatic challenge. i love making pages like this. i find it so easy to keep adding and adding. i need to make more of them. by the way... i didn't photoshop the photo or anything. i just came out like that from the lighting in the restraunt. i love it!

:-/

i am so mad. there is a concert in san francisco coming up. it's one of my favorite bands. tickets went on sale at 10am this morning, but i was in lab. they sold out in less than a minute. i knew this would happen. my sister agreed last night to try to get them for me. i was supposed to get four, which was the ticket limit. when my sister went to buy them, the limit changed to two. they were sold out once she got the two.

i have two tickets to an amazing show. these tickets are selling on ebay now for over $200. i was supposed to get a ticket for erin, her boyfriend, robin, and me. i have been stressing about what to do all day. when i found out my sister only got two, i was still in my lab. i said to my friends, "i guess i just won't go." deepa told me i have to go. i am the one who paid for them and i am the one who managed to get them. she suggested i just take james. it's a good idea, but i felt like i should have erin go because i know it means a lot to her. so on my way home from school, i had resolved to tell robin and erin. i know robin wanted to go, but wouldn't be crushed if she didn't get to. so i was thinking ok. erin and i can go and it will be fun.

i got home and i told erin. her response was "i'm giving my ticket to joe." so now i basically have to give mine up to. i mean. i am not interested in going with him. i can give mine to robin, but it's not like she wants to go with joe either. so i am just really sad. i had the option to choose my boyfriend over my friend. i could have just told all of them that i didn't get any tickets at all. james and i could have gone and it would have been fine, BUT i decided to choose my best friend. she didn't choose the same. i don't feel like something so stupid shoud ruin a friendship, but i'm not very happy right now.

just hanging out.

james and i took advantage of some hanging out time tonight. it was fun. we had pizza with my family and then we just hung out. free time is going to get more and more rare, so it's nice to be able to take advantage of it right now. [i have to admit, i was feeling a little guilty. already thinking "i should be reading for molecular bio right now, or ordering my supplies for photography." ahh. i can't escape the guilt.]

other random tid-bits:

-i am finally tired and it's just past midnight. :] so it looks like my sleeping schedule is getting better.

-i went to the photo store today and they were sold out of most everything. go figure. but the owner helped me get the two cameras ready. [a couple new batteries. nice.]

-i stopped by joanne's after the photo store, and i found some rhonna farrer stamps for $1 each. usually a set comes with like 10 and runs about $18. so this was a good deal, and i could pick the stamps i like and not end up buying the ones i won't use. i picked 7 and they were sold out of two others that i might want. [now that i don't have much time to play with my scrap stuff. grr.]

-chocolate is extra yummy lately. :]

-james and i made up a little game today. it's kind of like a thumb war, but instead we try to capture each other's lips. ha. it's so funny. i started laughing too hard and i couldn't play anymore.

-i am off to bed.

excitement.

i am really excited about my photography class. they are in the process of switching to just teaching digital photography, but my professor said we will get to learn both. i am really interested in the process of developing film, so that makes me happy. i like digital and all... but i don't think it would be as fun.

i am excited times two because when i got home tonight, my parents and i searched the house for a box with my dad's camera stuff and we actually found it. it has two old [like early 80s] really cool nikon cameras plus two old polaroid cameras! i've been wanting a polaroid camera lately because i have this little scrappy project in mind that i want to use polaroids to make, but i didn't want to buy one. one of the two is especially old and cute. maybe i will post a picture of it tomorrow. :]

i went to target again today with james. ha. we needed composition notebooks for molecular bio lab, but neither of us walked out with one. we did walk out with some other random crap though. go figure. as we were heading to my car james said "can we not spend anymore money for a month?" seriously. i need to cut back.

and on that note... tomorrow i am going to look for some polaroid film when i get out of class and i have to go buy all my chemicals and supplies for photography.

oh one more thing i am enormously excited about. i was having big time anxiety this morning because my 10am class was up at the med school and my 11am class was down in the midst of campus. it takes 10 minutes at the very least to get from one to the next. nice because i only have 10 minutes. :[ not good when the 10am class is molecular bio and has the potential to run a few minutes long. [i don't even want to think about test days.] well the 11am class was stats, so i talked to my advisor and explained that i have credit for a different stats class from AP stats in high school. she said they are basically the same class and she can waive me out of this class! so i am down to a lighter load this semester. i think it will be good because molecular bio plus molecular bio lab plus cell bio has the potential to stress me out. and photography is going to be fun, but definitely take lots of time to shoot my assignments and develop my film, all of which is done outstide of class time. so i am glad i can just focus on these important [and fun in the case of photography] classes and not worry about a stupid stats class.

and one more exciting thing. this extra free time in my schedule means that i can probably nanny for my dad's new partner. he has 4 cute kids. :] i wasn't sure i could do it because i had my stats lab in the afternoon, but now i am done by 2:15 everyday. i have to go back from 7-10pm for photography on mondays and wednesdays, but that should be ok.

my head is pounding from my lack of sleep. but i am happy and excited. :]