hey dad:)

okay, here's the pictures and the post that i promised:) i get that it's been so long since i posted that i couldn't even remember my username and password... had to try a few:) here's some pics i took this weekend at the company barbeque, much fun as usual... life's buy here, and all is well:)

janna

meet mr. teeth

caleb has managed to turn up the cheese factor to an all time high:) this is the standard for any posed picture... or if he even sees a camera around now, he usually will stop to pose instead of ignoring me like he used to do.

heh... note his shirt... it's my favourite that i picked up at a target in provo last year. so appropriate for him... so i was sad when i realized it wouldn't be lasting much longer. but you can see under mikehiela's jersey... i found another one when we went to anaheim... yay for me:)

this picture was taken last wednesday when mikehiela's class won tickets to the oilers game... her and gord went and had fun, even though the oilers lost...

been busy, having fun... lots of cool new stuff around the corner for letters by janna... i sent some off to canadian scrapbooker magazine for their summer issue, can't wait to see what they did with them! i will also be doing an article on altering letters in their winter issue... i'm a little nervous about that!! oh well, i have some time to figure it all out.

looking at new fonts to put in the lbj catalog... and other things...

bought myself a bind it all... i just cannot wait to play!!

saw this on ali's blog... i love her style & i'll definetly be purchasing this! will have to hold out for when it lands at michael's and use the 40% off coupon. i hate waiting:)

working on an album for keaghen, for his first year of life. i wonder why it is easier to do stuff for other people than it is for myself... i still haven't finished caleb's, and i haven't even STARTED for mikehiela. oh well.

and i'd better go to bed so i don't fall asleep in church tommorrow, lol!

have a great day!

janna

hello?

is there anyone out there anymore other than my dad?

dad? are you there?

how about we just say i forgot my blog address;)

life's been busy and the more time that passed the harder it got just to sit down and catch up... because there would just be even more to catch up on. and that's just work for lazy people like me.

procastinators unite! tommorrow.

readers digest version:

my honey turned 36 and his birthday was great. (ahem, december 8)

time together with friends over the holidays. love that.

well, and christmas was great (yeah, christmas, i know... over two months ago...)

lots of good times... we had boxing day over at our house with gord's parents, his brother dave and his wife rhonda, and their girls gabi and em. more extended family, too... it was great.

my baby turned 3 on december 30. the baby is gone... he's a little man now. *sigh*

absolutely partied out by new years. off to bed early:)

had a fun crop over at my house with some girlfriends. can't wait to do it again!

hmmm... valentine's day was great.... yours truly received a trip to cku anaheim with my bud, renee... apparently my hubby and renee & jon (renee's husband) had been scheming... they were trying for creative escapes (link provided for my dad, lol...) but with it selling out in under two minutes, lets just say... cku it is!!

here's my PSA... thanks to a real live demo by my son, let's just say... laptops are not coin operated.

my toshiba is somewhere in ontario where the great minds at the canadian headquarters are trying to decide if my son sticking dimes in the memory slot and then destroying the slot on the way out, would be considered accidental damage. hence the $434 warranty we paid on it, so it would cover said or like damage, so i would not have to pay $500 in repair. i don't know if you get any more 'accidental' than 'acts of god' such as this... the guy told me that it would have been better if he'd picked it up and threw it off the counter (??? so... you're telling me what???) we shall see.

but, i have to say, the highlight would have to have been spending five days in anaheim last week. we left sunday (25) and returned thursday (1). loved it. three days in disneyland, two hours in target, and WAY too long in a very scary los angeles airport (not to mention rush hour traffic) makes me a very grateful girl to be living in my hick town of less than a million people. seriously... orange county has approx 25 million people... and the smaller county of anaheim has 12 million people. that's three million short of the entire population of canada!!

anyways, disneyland... really is the happiest place on earth:) we went during one of the slowest times (during the week and during regular school time) so the average wait time was five minutes... it was incredible! the 'parade of dreams' was fantastic, the floats were stunning, incredibly detailed, costumes beautiful, and dancers were unbelievable. all of it was breathtaking. this was pretty cool in many ways... mikehiela has loved ariel the mermaid since she was two... ariel is even mikehiela's middle name (no, i did not name her after a mermaid!) she used to dream of growing up to be a mermaid... and she expressed her displeasure more than once with me that i called her mikehiela instead of ariel for a first name. so you get the picture... the girl loves ariel. so when we were having lunch at 'ariel's grotto', princess ariel came right up to mikehiela (it was so sweet, she was so excited she couldn't eat! although she was trying to hide it, she was very nervous, so cute!!) and ariel totally fussed over mikehiela's red hair and how they were related... it just made her day, and mine:) side note... caleb didn't want to have his pictures taken with any of the princesses... ariel, jasmine, snow white, belle... but he wanted one with cinderella. after, gord asked him why he wanted one with her and not the others, he said 'i like the blonde ones'. don't know if i should laugh or cry;)

talk to you later, hopefully sooner!

janna

and the winner is...

the camera is out of commision (batteries are charging) and as so not to keep you in suspense any longer... the winner is...

Kim said...
A friend showed me this one and I love all the fun ornaments www.christmastraditions.com
8:15 PM, November 26, 2006

congrats, kim! please contact me asap (use my email link at the right) so i can get this going right away for you!!

thanks to everyone for all their tips... i've checked them all out... happyenabling!!!

janna

it's RAK time!!

well, you know, the one where you cover the shipping....

so for a christmas present for yourself, or perhaps to rak someone else... like a secret santa?

just leave a comment below... with a link to your favourite christmas or holiday site... let's enable one another.
(mine is marthastewart.com , yes, it's true!! i admit it!! lots of great crafts, recipes and projects to last a lifetime)

any letter, any size (up to 24 x 24 ) and pretty much any font... let me know!! feel free to add a couple more to your order;)

this contest is only open until sunday night because i'm going to try and squeak this one in on the run in the beginning of the week.

so, if you enter, make sure you check back in to see if you've won, sunday night, monday morning at the latest. so only enter if you can do that!! or else it will go to the next person... sorry, it's an issue of time!

off to answer some emails now... good luck to you!!

happy holidays!!

scrapbook answers holiday crafts!

i will post more tommorrow... but to all my wonderful friends who know how excited i've been... after thinking that it wouldn't make it in the magazine (scrapbook answers has now shut down) my letters appeard in a special issue of scrapbook answers!! yee haw!! i actually found mine at my local sobeys (grocery store) totally by fluke... i had just been browsing the magazine rack... glad i did!!

more tommorrow!!

janna

 

gratuitous

ahhh, nothing more than a 'i think my kids are cute' picture.

thanks for humouring me:) 

a couple more halloween pics

and thank goodness the candy is just about gone:) 

family

the lighting in my hallway is not the best, and i have no flash on my camera, so i apologize for the shadows... but i just wanted to show you another way to use some letters... please note that 'family' is straight, again, it's just the shadows! this one was a lot of fun to do, it hangs in our upstairs hallway.

the font is times new roman, 8 inches tall, and just painted black with making memories paint.  

taking offense

on friday, i was so excited to be headed out to pigeon lake to teach some classes and spend the weekend out at the love2scrap retreat. i had a couple things to do before i could head out. to make a very long story short, while at Staples, our local office supply store, the girl i was dealing with was extremely rude and not helpful to me, and said some nasty things to me, too!! so i leave, feeling sick to my stomach and hurt ( i am WAAAAY too sensitive) and drive over to walmart to pick up my girlfriend who was running in for a couple of things. while i was there i had another woman start yelling and swearing at me!! ack!! i went back outside and tried to keep it together when i really just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. by the time my friend came out, though... i almost did start bawling! i was shaky and upset, and my adrenaline was still pumping. i tried to think... who knows what kind of a day they're having... or what's going on in their life... i could only guess what would cause two ladies in five minutes to feel comfortable enough with me to share their joy with me:) then once i was at the retreat, someone said something to me that was very hurtful, i don't even think she was aware of it or perhaps wouldn't even have thought it hurtful, just that to me it was. then i remembered a talk that i'd heard at general conference (at my church) i'm not trying to preach here, i just wanted to share what to me is a powerful truth, and a message that ultimately lifted my spirits.


"When we believe or say we have been offended, we usually mean we feel insulted, mistreated, snubbed, or disrespected. And certainly clumsy, embarrassing, unprincipled, and mean-spirited things do occur in our interactions with other people that would allow us to take offense. However, it ultimately is impossible for another person to offend you or to offend me. Indeed, believing that another person offended us is fundamentally false. To be offended is a choice we make; it is not a condition inflicted or imposed upon us by someone or something else.
In the grand division of all of God's creations, there are things to act and things to be acted upon (see 2 Nephi 2:13–14). As sons and daughters of our Heavenly Father, we have been blessed with the gift of moral agency, the capacity for independent action and choice. Endowed with agency, you and I are agents, and we primarily are to act and not just be acted upon. To believe that someone or something can make us feel offended, angry, hurt, or bitter diminishes our moral agency and transforms us into objects to be acted upon. As agents, however, you and I have the power to act and to choose how we will respond to an offensive or hurtful situation. " -david a. bednar

anyways, i am grateful for the truth in this message, and glad i was able to learn from it. i had never ever thought of it this way before, but it's true. now to fully implement it into my life...

signing off and jumping off my soapbox

:D have a great day

janna

tee hee