Busy, Busy, Busy

Stock photo from laptop

Hi there! I’m not lost, just kinda buried under my final project for my XHTML class! I’m doing a page for Journal Camp. It’s all dolled up to follow the requirements for the project, but I am a creative type that has to be creating for a purpose. It takes a lot longer to “make something up” for a subject than it does to create for something that already exists, so Journal Camp it is! The rough draft and copy is done, now I need to put the code in to, hopefully if done right, go from a text document to a web page! That’s kinds like magic. It’s fun!

Last weekend, my brother, Dave and I took our spouses back up to grandma’s house to work on the cleaning out. I was, not even kidding, shredding tax documents from 1958! Grandma and Papa moved there in 1982. You’re supposed to keep tax documents for 7 years. They didn’t even need to bring 1958 tax forms with them from Detroit!

We went up Friday night and left Monday morning so we’d have 2 full cleaning days. We really have made a good dent. I came home with a car trunk full of more old photos in antique frames. After I get a staging area cleared here, I have a major identifying and scanning project to work on. I started a family tree at ancestry.com and I’m filling in blanks and notes as I can put them together from the photos and notes I have. It is a huge task, but it’s kinda fun too. Ultimately, there will be 2 sets of disks with copies of everything, one for Dave and one for me. They can be copied from there, but initially everything will be duplicated for storing. I now have all the photos from both sets of grandparents, so I’m going to archive both sides of the family. Whew! Big project!

I’ll try to make some time to get the best of Monday Mug Shot up this afternoon for this week. I’m just a little back-logged right now! But I’ll get it all together, I always do!

The pre-camp meeting for Journal Camp is a week from tomorrow! How exciting!! The post for that week is ready; just have to do a little uploading. I have one more layout I’m working on that goes with week one. I want to remain ahead on this! You can see that I put up the sponsors list on the right side bar. The links are all working, I just need to get the blinkie locations up! I have 12 fabulous designers who have agreed to provide the random prizes for Journal Camp! I’m trying to use sponsor kits for the remaining layouts for examples to show off a little bit of what you might win.

Okay, now I have to get back to switching a laundry load, then working on my code for school!

Photoblog Wednesday

Pelicans in Ft. Pierce, Florida

April 1, 2010: Bright sun, palm trees, pelicans and a railroad bridge with a train due soon. A PERFECT morning!

Weekend Update

What is Giant Nani doing under
the desk in the SNL dollhouse??

I chuckle as I think back to my younger years and Saturday Night Live. Jane Curtin and Dan Ackroyd on Weekend Update. “Nani, you ignorant…” Nah, won’t go there.

Strange how those things from years ago leave their mark. They resurface from time to time. Today’s title is a good title for this post, but obviously, it has a place in my memory too. When searching for a title, the flies in the subconscious just popped it out, complete with the whole log of its origin!

Yes. Some mornings my brain works a little too well. It thinks about things I wasn’t planning on using brain cells for. That’s why I stay away from taking drugs of any sort, even Advil if I can avoid it. I need all the extra brain cells I can preserve!


So, here is Weekend Update in The Chronicles of Nani format.


Journal Camp Updates

Things are progressing well in my prep for Journal Camp. I’m working on the freebies, posting bonuses and organizing the random drawing prizes. I sent out a note to the designer’s forum at DST to see if any designers would be interested in donating a store coupon for the random drawing prizes. I am truly humbled by the response! I only have one opening left to offer and it’s the second trip around the schedule. I’ve had some offers from really great designers to donate a store coupon for a kit in the random prize drawings each week. The posting bonuses will consist of products from the Digitalegacies Designs store archive, products that were not, and will not be, freebies. The random prizes are from other professional designers. The Digital Scrapbooking community is so cool!

I’m also doing a few more example layouts. I can be a little verbose in my journaling sometimes and some of the techniques I talk about at Camp I haven’t used in a while. See? I’m getting better writing the tutorials too! Detailed journaling is good for a lot of photos, especially older ones or pages for milestone events, but mixing the styles up is so important to the aesthetic quality of the books too! Remembering the roots of what I do and talking about them only makes me better!

While I’m talking about verbosity, the tutorials are long. I can’t hope to make journaling easier if I don’t explain the techniques thoroughly! All of the Journal Camp blogs, including the precamp meeting, will be available as pdf files, images included, that you can download from The Chronicles of Nani to read offline or keep for reference.


Java 365
Vacation put me in more interesting coffee situations, but behind in doing my layouts for them! I did get Week 12 done!

 

Credits: Midnight Espresso by Booland Designs,

P365 Template 8 by MAH Designs,
special thanks to Scrappy Cocoa for the word art tutorial

Of course I’m three pictures into week 15 now, but I do plan to have at least week 13 done by the end of today.


Jelly Bean Trauma

I have a bag of Gimbal’s Gourmet Jelly Beans. They’re like Jelly Bellies, but less expensive and I like the pear ones. I can’t stand Jelly Belly’s Perfectly Pear, yuck! But I have firmly decided that I have the same repulsion for Gimbal’s Kiwi and this bag has too many kiwi and too many black licorice. I set a few on the table and pick one up at a time. I enjoy the cinnamon, key lime, and the pineapple. It’s a wonderful treat when I bite into root beer and java, my favorites. But then, my taste buds are shocked with the icky sensation of the kiwi or licorice.

David scowls about the price, but the last time I paid for Jelly Bellies at Cracker Barrel, it was a whole yummy bag of Very Cherry! Stores that have the single flavor bulk shooters are the BEST! I need to see if you can order single flavor packs of the Gimbal’s.



That’s the Nani-News. Good Night and have a pleasant tomorrow!

What’s for dinner, Mr. Moore?

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Hormel Foods. All opinions are 100% mine.

Funny how an antique commercial can still make me hungry. The Mr. Moore I’m talking about is the old commercial with the lumberjack, “First name’s Dinty. Last name’s Moore. Dinty lumberjack? Macho? Absolutely! We’re talking about Dinty Moore stew! It comes in a variety of meats and flavors. Hearty, convenient and tasty!

Before the lumberjack, Dinty, there were ads with the characters Jiggs and Maggie from “Bringing up Father” promoting hormel foods in the 30s and then later Fran Tarkenton called Hormel Chili “official training table food” for football!

Yes, I LOVE old commercials! But, the trip through Hormel foods advertising history is a little bigger than that right now. Dinty Moore stew and Hormel chili are having a big birthday this year! They came out in 1935, 75 years ago! Wow! That’s a time-honored and loved product, huh?

Hormel is a brand you may not even realize is a staple to you. Spam anyone? I know my Dad loves spam. It was one of those very special American foods he loved when he came to this country. He’ll be 65 this year and has been an American citizen most of his life now, but he still picks up a can of Spam every now and then!

In our home there is always a can or two of Hormel’s Mary Kitchen Roast Beef Hash. David loves it and will cook up a whole can for dinner on late work nights if he doesn’t get a chance to eat before he comes home or on lazy weekends. I’ve heated it up for him and tasted it. I even like it okay and I’m not a beef fan!

I was surprised to find, when I was looking at their website, that Hormel makes No So Sloppy Joe mix too! We love that stuff and will make a special trip if the grocery store we normally shop doesn’t have it on the shelf.

Hormel is not just food out of the can or refrigerated section either. There is a Hormel recipe site with some great ideas too! I remember growing up, Mom often made “Mexighetti.” Long before we’d ever heard about Cincinnati Chili, we’d never thought about chili on spaghetti, but Mom thought it sounded good and it was! Hormel Chili without beans on spaghetti became a kid favorite with Dave and me.

So thanks, Hormel, for all the wonderful food you’ve put on our shelves all these years and HAPPY BIRTHDAY Hormel Chili and Dinty Moore!

Outstanding Lunch!

Cream of Italy Soup
2½ cups for under 100 calories!

I just posted this fabulous recipe at Davlicious Recipes. OMG!

If you’re wondering what about this cup of soup is worth teenage text-slang from me, all my recipes are tested multiple times for consistency of flavor and accuracy of measurements before I post them at Davlicious. The measurements on Cream of Italy Soup are sound, so they pass for accuracy.

The consistency of flavor changes depending on the sauce you use. When I created the soup, we had a jar of Ragu meat sauce open in the refrigerator. It made for a tasty soup that was quick to make a and low calorie. Today was the final test. The sauce that’s open in the fridge is a container of my homemade sauce. That’s where the text slang comes in. My homemade sauce Italied up the flavor of the soup and … OMG!

The key here is pick a spaghetti sauce you really like the flavor of, because it definitely makes the soup’s flavor. Whichever sauce you use, it’s still low calorie, still fast and still delicious!

Link: See the recipe at Davlicious!
Cream of Italy Soup