{360} lauren rocks

my co-worker's daughter created this label and stuck it on my computer several years ago. i've never wanted to take it off because, well, it's true. lol i also keep my "i'm ready to call nasa" sticker next to it. oh, and a george sighting. he is my desktop background.

{330} garland

almost out of christmas ideas and almost out of days where it still makes sense to use them! when i bought my first christmas tree seven years ago, i had a blue bomber themed tree and so i had blue and gold garland. now i've upgraded my style and didn't need that garland anymore. george couldn't help but get involved in this name for today.

{326} new year's card

i was a little (okay, a lot) late with sending out christmas cards so i decided to do new year's cards instead. g and i got our "hair" done today and then my dad did our photos in his backyard. i rushed over to ss and got them printed just in time to hand out. :) my name is on it so it counts for this. :)

{313} jelly beans

at our work christmas banquet there was this massive candy bar and we filled up on candy big time. however, there was still a lot of candy leftover, so it was brought to our offices. i, of course, got a big tupperware container and hoarded as many jelly beans as i could. then, this weekend, i took them all home and proceeded to eat them. :) i love me some candy. looks like george wanted some too.

{274} halloween

i had to hold george down just to get him into this costume for one quick photo op but i got it! and then i immediately took the costume off of him because, as you can tell from this picture, he looks utterly miserable and i can't do that to him. :)

happy halloween!

{231} lunch

keeping on this food theme, today, whilst making the exact same lunch that i had yesterday, i decided to photograph the contents of my lunch but not before spelling out my name!
L-radishes, A-broccoli slaw, U-celery, R-onions, E-cucumbers, N-tuna.

yum!

 

george embraced his inner cat and sat patiently waiting for a spoonful of tuna!

{220} dog shirt

there is a website where you can basically personalize any single item with any name or word that you want. so i typed in "lauren" (duh) and this was one of my favourite things that it suggested. i already did a name with "team lauren" but how awesome would it be to get george a shirt that said this. *die.

{215} george and the LDC

well, what a moron i am. below is the picture i had posted for today. about 15 minutes later i finally noticed that it had nothing to do with my name! LOL what was i thinking?! so, here is the original, below is the actual name-inspired pic. :)

 

*********************
it's time for the annual showdown between the bombers and the roughriders. even being in different divisions doesn't diminish the rivalry and great fun that is had at these back-to-back games (next week is the banjo bowl, a rematch). my dad and have driven out to regina for four of these games but after they lost the last 3 we attended, we stopped going. in fact, they haven't won since. ouch! but we always had such a great time travelling there and getting in on the shouting matches between our two teams.

and, since it also happens to be george's 4th birthday (and i'm missing it!!), i had to give a little shout-out to him as well. :)

{197} yoga poses

i've been getting back into my yoga routine again. i love yoga because it's the one type of exercise that i'm moderately good at. i'm fairly flexible so i can accomplish many of the poses (albeit not some of the insane ones that require balance or turning my body into two halves). so, at first i thought i'd find the poses and re-create them myself but then i took one picture and saw all that cellulite so i changed my mind. instead i took pictures from out of a book i have (noted below). these are some talented flexible people.

who spies george??

{186} pawprints

when george was six months old, i took his paw print and painted it on to the corner of one of my walls. so i still had the template from that pawprint and thought that may be a good project but then i was wondering where on earth i would be able to fit my entire name using that stencil and it just wasn't going to work. so, i instead took the idea of pawprints but just used a brush in photoshop to create the same effect. total cop out. :)

gratuitous

just a gratuitous picture of george because he's just so damn cute.

{168} dog toys

i've done dog treats and other names involving george but i've never used his toys to create a name. *ack! or have i? too many names to keep track of. but i checked back and didn't see anything. oh, well.

of course, since g was involved, it turned into a total photo session because he is just so gosh darn cute. i just realized that his two favourite toys didn't make the cut. they are "flea" (a stuffed flea) and "renaud" (a red football that is his beyond absolute favourite toy in the whole entire history of the universe).

trying to get a picture of my name quickly before he ran through the toys and started taking them away!

so many toys he hasn't seen or played with in months!

he found his new gingerbread man toy that i picked out of the stuffed animals my mom was selling at the garage sale.

pretty pleased with himself!

family portrait.

after the name, we started playing with all the toys and chucking them around the house. it was quite fun and quite the mess.

{159} eyes shut

there are a few 365 blogs that i check every single day and this is one of them. i love her project because she is also doing words so it's easier to get inspiration from what she does (she creates the phrase "love one another" every day).

for friday's post, she did a blind contour drawing and i thought that was a great idea--create my name with my eyes shut. so, i took a similar lead and kept my eyes shut and used my left hand to guide my other hand around the paper...or so i thought.

i was sure that when i'd open my eyes that i had coloured everything in quite perfectly (i first drew the outlines and then attempted to colour them in) but it was way off! the outlines were okay because you keep your pen down the whole time but when it came time to use the pencil crayon, i completely lost focus on where i was colouring! great idea!

and whilst i coloured and drew, george slept on the table next to me. :)

a {day} off

yesterday was canada day so today was a day off! yay! this was how my day went:

a) slept in till 9:00 a.m.! woot! i took george out and immediately was struck by just how bloody hot it was outside already so i decided to take him for his walk straight away.

b) took george for his walk. only lasted 30 minutes because i was sweating bullets by then.

c) went to tim hortons for an x-large decaf coffee...and three raspberry timbits. oh em gee. these things are amazing. why did i let myself give in to temptation?!

d) watched two episodes of "top chef: texas"

e) decided to dress up as a 50s housewife and make muffins. i proceeded to only listen to frank sinatra and ray charles and dance around the kitchen in kitten heels.

f) ran out to shoppers to pick up a snack (ketchup mini-crispies). i shouldn't have them but since after 5, i cannot eat anymore till tomorrow evening, i said "screw it!"

g) watched another episode of "top chef: texas" whilst eating said mini-crisipies. delish.

h) felt super guilty about eating so much crap that i decided to go on over to A&E's and weed there for a while. i was thinking about a half hour.

i) show up at A&E's exactly as steve is pulling onto the driveway. lol i had even gone to so much effort as to drive the long way around so i could scope out whether anyone was at their house because i didn't want to weed while someone was there. just my luck. no, it was good. steve suntanned, drank beer and entertained me while i weeded.

j) euch. drank 90ml of senokot in order to clean my bowels. i'm in the hospital tomorrow having a small bowel series done (TMI?). not fun. can't eat after 5:00 p.m. and can't eat or drink at all tomorrow. have to be in the hospital before the sun rises. fantastic fun in store for tomorrow.

k) showered all the spiders off of me and all the poison ivy that i crawled in.

kl started this blog post.

m) wrote the next blog post.

n) watched "community". oh, gosh. love love this show.

o) got my stuff all ready for tomorrow's big hospital visit.

p) watched some more tv (a little "gilmore girls"!)

q) went to sleep. time to get rested up for tomorrow.

(the only part i left out was the definite-TMI stuff about the after effects of senokot. lol)

it was a good/interesting day!

{151} sticks

the other day we had some wicked wind in the evening and when i arrived home my backyard was covered in huge branches. so, i stored these suckers and then hauled them out today to spell out my name. of course, my name was too big to fit in the camera lens (and i am not tall enough) so this was as best i could do to capture it.

my mother said to me "but you've already done sticks." and i said, "actually, i've carved my name into a stick and i've taken pictures of branches that looked like the letters of my name but i had yet to lay out the branches on the ground to spell it out." i do think that now i have exhausted the sticks-thing, though.

"chears", george!

just had to share this post-haircut pic of george. look at those ears! that's all that's left of him. :)

{95} time lapse

i had been playing around with the "youcam" on my computer and, specifically, the security camera settings on it. i had set it up to record george for a few hours while i was not at home because i was curious to see what curious george would be up to while i was gone. he ended up not even appearing on the video so who knew where he was! lol

but, the idea did inspire me to try doing my name using the time lapse feature. it took FOUR tries but i finally got a video that i was happy with. the first two videos, i moved through my papers way too quickly so you couldn't even see what they said. the third video the lighting was so horrible that you couldn't read the letter! finally, on this fourth attempt, i held each letter for 70 seconds each and then did whatever while i was recording. i didn't want to just hold it perfectly still--i wanted some movement.

so, here it is! even george participated in a few shots. :)

{87} rook

yikes. almost every night this week i have found myself at my parents' house playing rook! lol we're just slightly addicted. or maybe it's because i haven't won a game since AUGUST! that's 27 games without a single win for moi!

we love to play rook. see, my dad was a major competitive rook player back in the 60s and before he and my mom were a couple, they even played games together then. but, my dad was a different person. he was so competitive that he couldn't handle losing or he couldn't handle it if his partner didn't play their cards correctly. he's such a different person now. he's so mellow about it. i mean, does he want to win? of course! but, it's NEVER a big deal if he doesn't.

i ended up taking the kitty with this hand and winning a round! yay!

george had so much fun playing outside in the nice fresh air that he totally zonked out. my parents always have this chair in their eating area just for george. that way he feels like he is part of the game too and he is always within stroking distance. :)

my mom helped me lay out the cards to spell my name.

i am always the dealer. fastest dealer in town! my parents always joke that i should work in vegas. :)

{86} graphic cards

i had bought a really large pack of these sassafras cards from peachy cheap about a year (or more) ago. i had never used any of them in any sort of way, so i was packing them up for the upcoming garage sale. but then i spotted one card that said "u is for umbrella" and i was inspired to cut the cards into the letters of my name quickly! a super simple project for today but at least these cards got some use before their sister-cards get sold. :)

(the original cards are below. they are actually pretty cute. i may need to keep the rest after all...)

whilst i was packing stuff up and pricing scrapbook items for the garage sale--i'm selling a TON of stuff--young g laid in his bed beneath the table in my craft room and snoozed. well, except for this one moment right when i took a picture because he heard the rustle of a leaf three blocks away and it frightened him. ;)

{85} playhouse

the playhouse in my backyard once stood pristine. now, it is covered in graphic design (or scribbles. your call.) created by the Es and various friends' kids over the years. i noticed that one name, in particular, was missing from the wall of art...my own! so, i have added it in permanent chalk.

meanwhile, george was outside with me and completely freaking out because of the brick-work being done on the building behind me. he was trying to hide under the lounge chair, under the garden hose, anything--just so he'd be protected! poor boo! but, while i was drawing on the playhouse, he found the perfect spot to hide--inside! he climbed over all my pots (their storage spot o'er winter) and just sat there. love.